The future Self invites you to go off the path of conformity, and onto an uncharted path that is only yours to walk.
With the mind de-noised, presence cultivated, and vigor created, we’re able to get to the final pillar of the Same Method‘s framework: Honouring the Self.
This final step is where the previous three pillars come together: having mental clarity, living in the present moment, and feeling full of energy, we can start getting into action.
In Part 2: Becoming Present, we explored how presence allows you to perceive the signals of C.G. Jung’s notion of the Self: the integrated totality of who you authentically are. This final article is all about what comes after that: the act of honouring the Self by actively pursuing the signals of the future Self.
The Inner Compass
To pursue the future Self, we’ll use a tool that was born into our flesh and made for exactly this purpose: The Inner Compass.
The Inner Compass is the intuition that nudges you towards the signals of the future Self. It helps you to give your life meaningful direction, pointing towards the path that is only yours to walk, leading to the realisation of the future Self.
What a person aligned with their inner compass looks like, differs from person to person, and can vary wildly in expression. But whenever you meet such a person, you can feel something vibrating; you feel the energy of somebody that is lit up from the inside, precisely because they’re doing what they’re essentially “made for”. That feeling, that character, that energy, is what happens when the inner compass is at work.
People that are aligned with their Inner Compass are, in grandiose forms, artists, entrepreneurs, inventors, creators. But also, in more subtle forms, we find people throughout every layer of society who bring spirit to their craft because they are doing their life’s work, driven by their inner compass.
These are the people that created a life that is honouring the Self, made manifest through utilising the Inner Compass.
The Simple Practice of Inner Compassing
Honouring the Self and using the Inner Compass risks sounding fluffy, but the practice is as straightforward as a hotdog in Ikea. Here’s the “how to” of honouring the Self:
Whenever you sense a recurring thought, interest, or inclination that is genuinely yours, you should act on that inclination with courage and curiosity.
Within the Same Method, this is all that honouring the Self comes down to. The mechanics behind this take root in the Jungian idea that the Self is constantly pulling you towards itself. It does so by guiding your attention and by making you interested in things in the present moment.
And even though those interests might feel strange, weird, or alien at first, you can trust that those signals are there for a reason: they want to become a part of you.
You don’t have to understand those inclinations at first – it’s only after honouring them that you can understand them and place them.
You also don’t have to throw your life overboard, or go all-in on the first impulse that you feel. Honouring the Inner Compass is purely about paying attention to how you align your actions with your inner compass, to then explore whatever it points at with curiosity.
This is essentially all that honouring the Self really means: to perceive what truly wants to become a part of you, and to act on it with existential courage.
Trusting The Pull When It Doesn’t Make Sense
An interesting thing about honouring the Self is that the inclinations of the Inner Compass often come with a flavour of low-key anxiety. The pull of the future Self can make you feel slightly out of place, unqualified, strange, or like a total alien.
Firstly, that’s because the future Self invites you to go off the path of conformity, and onto an uncharted path that is only yours to walk.
Secondly, it’s because you won’t ever know beforehand what that pull manifests itself into. You won’t be able to pinpoint where you’ll end up, as you can only understand the pull of the future Self in retrospect.
Steve Jobs mentioned this dynamic in his Stanford commencement speech, explaining it as “connecting the dots”: Once every now and then, there is a dot, a thing, or a bleep on your radar that sparks your interest. They don’t make sense now, but later, after having pursued them nonetheless, you’ll be able to finally connect those dots.
It’s how he got from a curiosity for calligraphy into the creation of Apple’s design. It’s how Einstein went from his father’s compass into a lifelong fascination with invisible forces. It’s how Frida Kahlo, a student of medicine, became Frida Kahlo, the painter. It’s how your own strange, seemingly innocent inclination leads to…
What If We Neglect The Inner Compass?
On the other side, when we neglect the Inner Compass and its nudges for too long, it is hell-bent to let us know we’re headed for the wrong direction, actively punishing our neglect through “felt dysfunction”.
Living inauthentically as such, we start to feel out of place, unmotivated, negative, apathetic, down, as if we’re neglecting a part of ourselves that we cannot fully articulate, but is nonetheless a part of us.1 Sometimes, it feels like we’re not sure if we truly belong where we currently are in life.
And even though both the Inner Compass and the signals of the Future Self are always present, by being distracted long enough, we simply unlearn to recognise them.
Signals Of A False Self
Lastly, and especially in today’s world in which distraction has become the norm, it’s easy to mistake the false Self for the authentic Self.
Through society’s metrics of success, we mistake the desire for money, success, or status as part of our future Self (degrading our quality of life2). But usually, these things are a projection of a deeper inclination we fail to explain: a wish for freedom, recognition, or a sense of security outsourced to the number on a checking account.
Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson would call these projections Shadow projections: longings that hide their true shape behind socially acceptable masks. The real signals of the future Self, however, don’t usually look like markers of success. They look like strange, mysterious interests or passions you can’t quite justify.
Conclusion: Tying It All Together
In Part 1: Denoising The Mind, we discovered our first obstacle: how mental noise erodes self-concept clarity (S.C.C). When a lacking S.C.C. becomes your new normal, your self-image starts to blur, and so does the line between your ideas and those that were never truly yours to begin with.
In Part 2: Becoming Present, we explored the second obstacle: the loss of presence and how it disables us from perceiving the world around us and the glimpses of the Future Self.
In Part 3: Creating Vigor, we addressed the third obstacle: how a lack of vigor prevent us from acting on those inclinations. You may catch a glimpse of the future Self, but if you’re lacking in vigor, you have no life force to act on it.
In this last part, we address Honouring the Self, how it creates direction, and how direction aligned with the future Self creates meaningful action.
These four challenges (noise, lack of presence, depletion, misaligned action) are why the practice of the Same Method exists:
Denoising the mind allows us to perceive ourselves again.
Presence allows us to perceive the nudges of the future Self.
Vigor builds the energy and resilience needed to act on them.
Honouring the Self presents the gift of purpose, with the Inner Compass as our North Star to guide us forward.
These four principles, taken together, allow the future Self to manifest in an exciting manner.
Without denoising, presence is impossible.
Without presence, the current moment is never lived.
Without vigor, the body can’t get into action.
Without honouring the Self, none of it matters, because insight without action keeps us on the couch until we arrive at our deathbeds, forced to shake hands with the unlived lives that have been sitting idle in our hearts.
This is what the Same Method is all about: to arrive at your deathbed loaded with memories so good, they justify death itself.
Footnotes
- Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne & Ilardi (1997): The gap between actual self and true self correlates with depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms ↩︎
- Dittmar et al. (2014): Materialism and personal well-being: a meta-analysis of 259 studies linking material values to lower wellbeing (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) ↩︎
