39. Taking Care of Your Future Self
A year from now, there's going to be a version of you. She'll either be someone who's run the races and done the things you're dreaming about right now, or she'll still be sitting where you are today, wishing she had. In this episode, I'm sharing a perspective that's been one of the most powerful mindset shifts I had early on in ultra running - one that completely changed how I approach goals and helped me break through my pattern of DNFs.
The traditional approach to goal-setting focuses on achievements and finish lines, but that's not enough to sustain you through a whole year of early mornings, sacrifice, and doing the work when you don't feel like it. Instead, I'm proposing something different: decide how you're going to take care of your future self and set her up for success.
You'll learn exactly how to meet your future self, build her, and commit to her throughout the year. This approach works differently in your brain and heart than traditional goal-setting because humans are wired to take care of people they love - and your future self deserves that same care.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why traditional goal-setting with achievement lists doesn't create sustained action throughout the year.
How to specifically imagine your future self - not just what she's accomplished but who she is and how she thinks.
Why taking care of your future self feels different than self-improvement or obligation.
What question to ask yourself that makes every decision throughout the year simpler.
The real reason your future self is worth the effort and why she's counting on you.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
A year from now, there's going to be a version of you. She'll either be someone who's run the races and done the things you're dreaming about right now, or she'll still be sitting where you are today, wishing she had. She's going to exist either way, that's guaranteed. The only question is, are you going to take care of her and set her up for success, or are you going to leave her stranded?
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 39. Today, I'm sharing a perspective that's been one of the most powerful mindset shifts I had early on in ultra running. I've always really thought like this, especially growing up, but it's easy to lose track of to let life pull you off course. And right now I'm getting more deliberate about using it again. So I'm sharing it with you.
All right. It's that time of year. You're thinking about what you want to achieve in the next 12 months. You want to finish that goal race or hit that sub 30 or sub 24 in a hundred miler, get that FKT you've been eyeing, finally get into that lottery race you've been chasing for years, so many goals. And you do what you're supposed to do, right? You pick your achievements, you make a plan, probably a training plan, maybe even a very detailed one with a lot of layers to it.
But here's what actually happens for most of us. You can't truly envision it. You can't feel what that future will be like a year from now. It's this far off thing that happens after you achieve the accomplishments on your list. You see the massive gap between where you are right now in that finish line and somewhere deep down, you don't believe you can cross it. When you think past the achievements to the actual work they'll take, the year of training, the discipline, the sacrifice, it feels daunting. More like obligation than excitement.
And that list of achievements, as dreamy as it sounds right now in January, it's not strong enough to sustain you through a whole year of effort. A whole year of early mornings and saying no to things you wanna do and doing the work when you really don't feel like it. And life happens. So with that kind of commitment, it's really easy to get off track in those 12 months. The result is no sustained action so you never get there.
Let me tell you about a personal story when I figured this out the hard way. Back when I started running a hundred mile races, I loved it. It was my thing. I fell in love. And then I started DNFing every other race because I kept quitting and giving up. I DNFed Umstead. I DNFed Leadville, both of them twice. And it really bothered me deep down, but not just for the accomplishment or for my record or anything like that. It bothered me for who I was. I'm not somebody who quits.
So I didn't want to keep being somebody who quit. And I definitely didn't want to become someone who quit and then didn't even care about it afterwards. Someone who normalized quitting. That was the fear that woke me up. This realization that if I continued doing what I was doing, I'd end up becoming someone who was okay quitting.
So, on the third year at both races, I decided I was going to get past this pattern and be the person I knew I really was, someone who finished those races, someone who was confident enough to master what had been stopping me. And I looked at what I'd let hold me back. Things like casually breaking promises to myself and the discomfort of standing out in succeeding among friends who didn't finish the same race. Believing others when they said I couldn't do it and not believing that I deserved good results.
And then I decided I was not going to let my future self down. She was gonna look back a year from then and know that I had her back, that I worked for her, that I worked hard for her. And this time at Umstead and Leadbill, I came at it not from needing to finish or redeem myself in any way, but needing to be the future self who came through and did what she was capable of. And I did. And my ultra running took off from there.
So why doesn't the traditional goal-setting approach work for most of us? It's because achievements on a list are abstract and disconnected from who you are. You're working toward a thing that you will have, an achievement that you can check off. It's out there in the future, very separate from where you are right now.
And somewhere in your brain, as excited as you are about it right now, when you're dreaming about them, that is going to register as work. Something you have to force yourself to do. And it feels really inconvenient right now. Too hard right now. So you don't put in the effort to figure out how to get there, and then you don't do the work. So you end up in this really weird place where you really want the achievement, you feel very strongly about that, it's a dream, but not enough to actually change anything.
But what if the problem here isn't your goals? It's who you're doing them for. Here's what I want you to do differently this year. Instead of deciding what you want to achieve a year from now, decide how you're going to take care of your future self, who is you a year from now, and how you're going to set her up for success. Because your future self is going to exist. She will be someone, and she can't be who you want her to be without your help.
This works differently in your brain and your heart than goal-setting does, and here's why. Humans are wired to take care of people they love. We'll get up in the middle of the night for a sick child, we'll sacrifice for a partner, we'll take care of a parent, we'll go to extraordinary lengths for someone we care about. And we don't even think twice about it. We don't think about it as work. We just do it because they matter. There's just no question about it. But when it comes to self-improvement and your own goals, when it's framed as an obligation to better ourselves, we resist and we procrastinate and we make excuses.
It feels like punishment, like we're not good enough as we are. Taking care of your future self flips this. You're not trying to prove that you're good enough, you're not grinding towards some achievement to prove your worth, you're caring for someone who needs you. Someone who's counting on you. Someone you already love. Because she's you. And the beautiful thing? She's not this idealized fantasy version of you. She's actually you. Just with more experience, more strength, and more confidence. Your future you is real and achievable and she needs your help to get there.
So how do you actually do this? Let me walk you through it. The first step is what I like to think of is you have to meet her. I mean first you need to imagine her a year from now. Like really imagine her. Not just what she's accomplished but who she is. How she's different from who you are right now. So close your eyes if you need to, unless you're driving or something like that. If it's safe, close your eyes and picture her.
What is she thinking about herself? How does she feel when she shows up at the starting line? What has she been doing for the past year? What milestones has she achieved? Not just in racing, but in how she shows up in life. Make it specific. Make it visceral, don't just say she's more confident. What does that confidence look like? How does she walk? What does she say to herself when things get hard? What does she think of mistakes and DNFs? What does she believe about herself that you don't quite believe yet?
This isn't about creating some perfect version of yourself either. It's about seeing who you actually can become with a year of consistent care and effort. Second step is build her and not just her achievements. And this is where most people mess up. They make a plan for the achievements, the races, the times, the miles, the training plans and all that. But that's not enough. You need to make a plan for building who she is, not just what she does.
If she's finished 300 milers and is more confident, how are you going to create that confidence? Because confidence doesn't just happen when you cross the finish line. Confidence is built in a thousand small moments of keeping promises to yourself, of doing hard things and proving to yourself that you can handle discomfort. It's not just finish lines. So when I say build her, I mean start making choices and taking actions like her right now. Start thinking like her.
You need to bridge the gap between how you see yourself now and who she is. Sure, map out race plans that show exactly how you can do it in a way that she will appreciate. Make it a gift to her, not a punishment, not a test you have to pass. A gift of a race plan. Build the mental and emotional strength that she'll have. The strength that keeps her in control of her race and lets her body perform at its best in the face of doubt. You know what I mean. It's the stuff I talk about on this podcast. That calm ability to stay present and deal with negative thinking. That skill of managing pain and discomfort without panicking.
Learn the essential skills every ultra runner needs to know to stay in the race and run their best. Make sure she's confident and feels like she belongs out there. And here's a big one. Redefine failure for her. Make failure the building block of success so taking risks feels like growth, not danger. Because if you don't do this, she's going to play it safe all year. And safe doesn't get the two of you where you want to go by the end of the year. So that's building her.
The third step is committing to her. Now you have to commit. And to commit, you have to answer one question. Why is she worth it? Why is she worth the work and the effort? And I'm going to get you started by telling you why because she's gonna make you proud. You can already feel it, can't you? You can already feel how proud you are of her, where she's standing at the end of the year. Just thinking about who she is and what she's done, how she's shown up. You're proud of her right now.
She's worth learning new things for. She's worth trying new things. She's worth improving from every race, doing something different when things aren't working. She's going to go further than you can see from here. She's going to see opportunities you can't yet imagine. She's going to have experiences you can't predict. And you're giving that to her.
And here's the thing that seals it. She is yours. She belongs to you. You're the only one who can do this for her. Not your career pacers. Not your training partners, not some perfect plan you found online. She needs you specifically, and she's counting on you. All right. The last sentence is to care for her consistently. This isn't a set it and forget it thing. You can't just make a plan in January and hope you turn out like her in December. You need to evaluate throughout the year. You need to check in, make sure you're still on track, adjust when you need to to make sure you're setting her up the best way possible.
And keep asking yourself, am I taking care of her? Am I making choices that help her or am I making choices that leave her stranded? Sometimes taking care of her means pushing through discomfort. Sometimes it means resting when you don't want to. Sometimes it means doing the unsexy work of strength training or mobility or figuring out your nutrition, but it all comes back to her, your future self.
Is this helping her or hurting her? That question will guide you through the whole year and it makes every decision simpler. Look, I'm doing this too, alongside you all. I have a version of myself a year from now that I'm taking care of right now. She's counting on me and I am not going to let her down.
So here's what I want you to do. Imagine yourself a year from now. Imagine you are your future self. And imagine looking back on your past self and all the work you did to get where you are now. All those early mornings. All the races that didn't go perfectly but taught you something. All the moments she chose you over immediate comfort. All the gratitude you feel for her. All the love you feel for her because she showed up for you. You both know it's been worth it.
And here's the thing, it wasn't work. Not really, it was growing and becoming. It was the strongest kind of self-care. So this year, don't just set goals. Take care of your future self. She's waiting for you.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 39. Today, I'm sharing a perspective that's been one of the most powerful mindset shifts I had early on in ultra running. I've always really thought like this, especially growing up, but it's easy to lose track of to let life pull you off course. And right now I'm getting more deliberate about using it again. So I'm sharing it with you.
All right. It's that time of year. You're thinking about what you want to achieve in the next 12 months. You want to finish that goal race or hit that sub 30 or sub 24 in a hundred miler, get that FKT you've been eyeing, finally get into that lottery race you've been chasing for years, so many goals. And you do what you're supposed to do, right? You pick your achievements, you make a plan, probably a training plan, maybe even a very detailed one with a lot of layers to it.
But here's what actually happens for most of us. You can't truly envision it. You can't feel what that future will be like a year from now. It's this far off thing that happens after you achieve the accomplishments on your list. You see the massive gap between where you are right now in that finish line and somewhere deep down, you don't believe you can cross it. When you think past the achievements to the actual work they'll take, the year of training, the discipline, the sacrifice, it feels daunting. More like obligation than excitement.
And that list of achievements, as dreamy as it sounds right now in January, it's not strong enough to sustain you through a whole year of effort. A whole year of early mornings and saying no to things you wanna do and doing the work when you really don't feel like it. And life happens. So with that kind of commitment, it's really easy to get off track in those 12 months. The result is no sustained action so you never get there.
Let me tell you about a personal story when I figured this out the hard way. Back when I started running a hundred mile races, I loved it. It was my thing. I fell in love. And then I started DNFing every other race because I kept quitting and giving up. I DNFed Umstead. I DNFed Leadville, both of them twice. And it really bothered me deep down, but not just for the accomplishment or for my record or anything like that. It bothered me for who I was. I'm not somebody who quits.
So I didn't want to keep being somebody who quit. And I definitely didn't want to become someone who quit and then didn't even care about it afterwards. Someone who normalized quitting. That was the fear that woke me up. This realization that if I continued doing what I was doing, I'd end up becoming someone who was okay quitting.
So, on the third year at both races, I decided I was going to get past this pattern and be the person I knew I really was, someone who finished those races, someone who was confident enough to master what had been stopping me. And I looked at what I'd let hold me back. Things like casually breaking promises to myself and the discomfort of standing out in succeeding among friends who didn't finish the same race. Believing others when they said I couldn't do it and not believing that I deserved good results.
And then I decided I was not going to let my future self down. She was gonna look back a year from then and know that I had her back, that I worked for her, that I worked hard for her. And this time at Umstead and Leadbill, I came at it not from needing to finish or redeem myself in any way, but needing to be the future self who came through and did what she was capable of. And I did. And my ultra running took off from there.
So why doesn't the traditional goal-setting approach work for most of us? It's because achievements on a list are abstract and disconnected from who you are. You're working toward a thing that you will have, an achievement that you can check off. It's out there in the future, very separate from where you are right now.
And somewhere in your brain, as excited as you are about it right now, when you're dreaming about them, that is going to register as work. Something you have to force yourself to do. And it feels really inconvenient right now. Too hard right now. So you don't put in the effort to figure out how to get there, and then you don't do the work. So you end up in this really weird place where you really want the achievement, you feel very strongly about that, it's a dream, but not enough to actually change anything.
But what if the problem here isn't your goals? It's who you're doing them for. Here's what I want you to do differently this year. Instead of deciding what you want to achieve a year from now, decide how you're going to take care of your future self, who is you a year from now, and how you're going to set her up for success. Because your future self is going to exist. She will be someone, and she can't be who you want her to be without your help.
This works differently in your brain and your heart than goal-setting does, and here's why. Humans are wired to take care of people they love. We'll get up in the middle of the night for a sick child, we'll sacrifice for a partner, we'll take care of a parent, we'll go to extraordinary lengths for someone we care about. And we don't even think twice about it. We don't think about it as work. We just do it because they matter. There's just no question about it. But when it comes to self-improvement and your own goals, when it's framed as an obligation to better ourselves, we resist and we procrastinate and we make excuses.
It feels like punishment, like we're not good enough as we are. Taking care of your future self flips this. You're not trying to prove that you're good enough, you're not grinding towards some achievement to prove your worth, you're caring for someone who needs you. Someone who's counting on you. Someone you already love. Because she's you. And the beautiful thing? She's not this idealized fantasy version of you. She's actually you. Just with more experience, more strength, and more confidence. Your future you is real and achievable and she needs your help to get there.
So how do you actually do this? Let me walk you through it. The first step is what I like to think of is you have to meet her. I mean first you need to imagine her a year from now. Like really imagine her. Not just what she's accomplished but who she is. How she's different from who you are right now. So close your eyes if you need to, unless you're driving or something like that. If it's safe, close your eyes and picture her.
What is she thinking about herself? How does she feel when she shows up at the starting line? What has she been doing for the past year? What milestones has she achieved? Not just in racing, but in how she shows up in life. Make it specific. Make it visceral, don't just say she's more confident. What does that confidence look like? How does she walk? What does she say to herself when things get hard? What does she think of mistakes and DNFs? What does she believe about herself that you don't quite believe yet?
This isn't about creating some perfect version of yourself either. It's about seeing who you actually can become with a year of consistent care and effort. Second step is build her and not just her achievements. And this is where most people mess up. They make a plan for the achievements, the races, the times, the miles, the training plans and all that. But that's not enough. You need to make a plan for building who she is, not just what she does.
If she's finished 300 milers and is more confident, how are you going to create that confidence? Because confidence doesn't just happen when you cross the finish line. Confidence is built in a thousand small moments of keeping promises to yourself, of doing hard things and proving to yourself that you can handle discomfort. It's not just finish lines. So when I say build her, I mean start making choices and taking actions like her right now. Start thinking like her.
You need to bridge the gap between how you see yourself now and who she is. Sure, map out race plans that show exactly how you can do it in a way that she will appreciate. Make it a gift to her, not a punishment, not a test you have to pass. A gift of a race plan. Build the mental and emotional strength that she'll have. The strength that keeps her in control of her race and lets her body perform at its best in the face of doubt. You know what I mean. It's the stuff I talk about on this podcast. That calm ability to stay present and deal with negative thinking. That skill of managing pain and discomfort without panicking.
Learn the essential skills every ultra runner needs to know to stay in the race and run their best. Make sure she's confident and feels like she belongs out there. And here's a big one. Redefine failure for her. Make failure the building block of success so taking risks feels like growth, not danger. Because if you don't do this, she's going to play it safe all year. And safe doesn't get the two of you where you want to go by the end of the year. So that's building her.
The third step is committing to her. Now you have to commit. And to commit, you have to answer one question. Why is she worth it? Why is she worth the work and the effort? And I'm going to get you started by telling you why because she's gonna make you proud. You can already feel it, can't you? You can already feel how proud you are of her, where she's standing at the end of the year. Just thinking about who she is and what she's done, how she's shown up. You're proud of her right now.
She's worth learning new things for. She's worth trying new things. She's worth improving from every race, doing something different when things aren't working. She's going to go further than you can see from here. She's going to see opportunities you can't yet imagine. She's going to have experiences you can't predict. And you're giving that to her.
And here's the thing that seals it. She is yours. She belongs to you. You're the only one who can do this for her. Not your career pacers. Not your training partners, not some perfect plan you found online. She needs you specifically, and she's counting on you. All right. The last sentence is to care for her consistently. This isn't a set it and forget it thing. You can't just make a plan in January and hope you turn out like her in December. You need to evaluate throughout the year. You need to check in, make sure you're still on track, adjust when you need to to make sure you're setting her up the best way possible.
And keep asking yourself, am I taking care of her? Am I making choices that help her or am I making choices that leave her stranded? Sometimes taking care of her means pushing through discomfort. Sometimes it means resting when you don't want to. Sometimes it means doing the unsexy work of strength training or mobility or figuring out your nutrition, but it all comes back to her, your future self.
Is this helping her or hurting her? That question will guide you through the whole year and it makes every decision simpler. Look, I'm doing this too, alongside you all. I have a version of myself a year from now that I'm taking care of right now. She's counting on me and I am not going to let her down.
So here's what I want you to do. Imagine yourself a year from now. Imagine you are your future self. And imagine looking back on your past self and all the work you did to get where you are now. All those early mornings. All the races that didn't go perfectly but taught you something. All the moments she chose you over immediate comfort. All the gratitude you feel for her. All the love you feel for her because she showed up for you. You both know it's been worth it.
And here's the thing, it wasn't work. Not really, it was growing and becoming. It was the strongest kind of self-care. So this year, don't just set goals. Take care of your future self. She's waiting for you.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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