Photo of the author by Trang Vu; Gio Hai School, Quong Tri, Vietnam, 2025
In the late 2010s, I was offered a thoughtful prompt in the midst of a full-day workshop, something that’s stayed with me for years.
“Who is your hero?”
My fellow participants and I were granted a few minutes to consider our answers, after which the facilitator asked for a few responses. What followed was generally understandable and unsurprising. “My father.” “My mother.” “Teddy Roosevelt.” “Martin Luther King Jr.” “Hank Aaron.” “Michelle Obama.” “Jack Welch.” (…ok, Welch was a bit surprising, but as this was one of those “executive coaching” workshops, not totally out of left field*. *… offered with apologies to Hank Aaron.)
Following a customary, polite summary, the facilitator offered a pretty compelling suggestion: “Could your hero be you, ten years from now?”
His message: imagine yourself 10 years from now, doing and being everything you hoped you could do and be. Become inspired by that vision and then thoughtfully plan and conduct your life in a way that allows your vision to manifest. Can the “you” you imagine to be 10 years from now serve as your hero today?
An interesting notion. Again, a prompt that has stayed with me.
At the time of this workshop, I was at the height of my ego-centric understanding of the world and my place in it. My approach to the prompt reflected this. I dutifully considered all of the factors that would make “me, 10 years from now” worthy of my admiration and hero-worship: status, position, reach, wealth, family, friends, possessions, accomplishments, and the presumed happinesses that go along with that. I imagined quite a picture, then tucked it away as something to call up every now and then when I needed some sort of hero-based inspiration.
Even as my spirit, personality, and priorities changed over the years, I still recalled that prompt every so often and imagined how my future self could inspire me today.
Several weeks ago, during an extended retreat + service trip to Vietnam, I found myself revisiting that question. I imagined myself, 10 years from now, with starkly different attributes than the first time I did the exercise. And indeed this new vision made me quite happy.
That same day, situated and saturated as I was with abundant teachings of the present moment, a spin on the original prompt came into my mind.
Instead of the “me, 10 years from now” serving as my hero today, what if the “me of today” or the “me of present moment” could be the hero to my future self? What if my thinking, speaking, and acting today, in the here-and-now could be so worthwhile that my future self is able to look back with pride and inspiration?
Setting a goal, having a vision, and setting forth to achieve it is certainly a tried-and-true approach to living a productive life. But that approach has the downside of giving ‘the future’ a level of importance and reality that it may not deserve considering that the future doesn’t actually exist except as a thought. It also puts the real action, manifesting as accomplishment, ten years into the future, leaving the here-and-now more than a bit open-ended.
The present moment is real. It exists. Right now, in fact. So what can I be doing today that just might make me a hero to the person I eventually become?
My answers to this refined prompt vary day to day. But regardless of how I answer, I’m enjoying the new dose of motivation that comes from this spin on the original.
I hope you find this helpful.