Seventeen years ago, I handed in my final exam at the University of Toronto. I left campus and didn’t look back. Until last month.
I went for a walk down memory lane:
- Passing through the athletic center where I played basketball or worked out nearly every day.
- Looking up at “The Penthouse,” our nasty Bloor Street apartment where we kept score of who caught the most mice.
- Meandering along the paths I used to slip and slide along in winter as I hurried from one class to the next.
I stumbled into a billowing hot box of nostalgia. For an hour, I was back in my 21-year-old mind and body. What a trip.
Then it faded. I snapped back to the present, and the hangover hit: Those flashbacks were nearly half my life ago.
Seconds Shouldn’t Taste Better
I fantasized about time traveling back. Watching football on Sunday with Eddy and Simon. Playing pick-up in the AC. Sitting beside Brian in Microeconomics, ogling our cute professor… who was younger than I am now. (Yikes)
If I could briefly re-live those times, I’d savor every second like the final spoonful of a Skor Blizzard before moving to DQ-less Switzerland. Pure 10/10 joy.
But did Young Chris suck every ounce of deliciousness from those moments?
Not gonna lie. He was pretty content. But not 10/10 level. Why? Because “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”
But that’s dumb.
Why don’t we know what we got ‘til it’s gone?
I’m pretty confident I do know.
You’re Already Moving to Memory Lane?
Sixteen years from now, a walk down Kits Beach would similarly send Future Chris on a trip into nostalgia-land:
- Doing workouts with Kim while Sandy eats dirt and Zac hits things (including Sandy) with sticks.
- Picnicking with our friends as the kids run wild, hitting neighbors with their balls at and mooching snacks off of them.
- Typing away at silly posts like this while sitting on a picnic table.
What does it take to fully savor such moments right now? To enjoy the present as much as my future self would if he could briefly slip into my sandals?
Thinking about it helps, for sure. But I rather not rely on gratitude prompts in a Waking Up App or Moleskine. How do you hardwire this perspective into your head? How do you strap the angel of your older self onto your shoulder to softly whisper in your ear, “Enjoy this while it lasts, you bozo.”
How to Strap Your Elderly Self Onto Your Shoulders
Step one: Give it a silly name. Unique names make fluffy concepts more real, memorable, and attack-able. Let’s call this “enjoying present moments you’ll be nostalgic about” thing “prostalgia.”
Steps two through two million? Work on broadening your perspective of life. Zoom out on your temporal timeline like you’re editing the movie of your life. The wider your view, the clearer you’ll see what matters, what doesn’t, and what’s worth savoring.
How do you beef up your zoom-out muscles?
Train. Regularly zoom in and out until it’s second nature.
My regimen: Write letters to my future self, read letters from my past self, do weekly, monthly, and yearly reviews, occasionally look back on my daily logs from years ago. These practices strengthen my bonds with my future selves.
After nine years of training, I’ve developed a pretty good ear for Old Fogey Chris’s croaky wisdom. Not perfect, but not bad.
‘Prostalgia’ goes a long way toward explaining why I tend to be so content on a day-to-day basis despite my professional “unsuccess”. Even if Future Chris becomes a bestselling author with big shots throwing big bucks at him for Systematic Brilliance coaching, he’d still be jealous of what I’ve got now.
So, Successful Chris, if you’re reading this in the future, here’s my message:
“Na na na boo boo. You can’t be me. Suckaaaa.”
Become a Prostalgia Pro
“Prostalgia” isn’t about becoming some live-in-the-moment gratitude pothead. It’s about putting your future selves in a spot where they have plenty to be prostalgic and nostalgic about. And maybe even more importantly avoiding no-potential-for-nostalgia life-wasters.
The good news? I don’t see why you can’t enjoy your cake and bake more for later, too. It just takes practice. The more you zoom in-and-out and back-and-forth in time, the more you go beyond appreciating “prostalgia” on a conceptual basis to engrain it into your brain.
So give yourself a prostalgic pump. Ask yourself:
- What slice of your “boring” today will Future You savor?
- How can you make your future selves even more jealous?
- What are you doing that has zero potential for nostalgia?
- What practice can you start implementing to paint ‘prostalgia’ into your grey matter?
On the latter, here’s a free step-by-step of the system I’ve evolved over the past nine years:
You can implement it on your own. I did. But if you’d like a kickstart and guidance, I have a few spots opening up for my 1-on-1 “Systematic Brilliance” VIP (very intensely personalized) coaching. The program’s better than ever this third time around.
DIY or VIP, I guarantee you’ll look back on implementing your system maybe not nostalgically but feeling super grateful to have done so.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time, keep doing prostalgic things,
Chris
Video Version
Prefer to watch? Here’s a breakdown of the key ideas:
Stop Scattering Your Effort
Get a personalized 'x-ray' of your core wiring. Answer 4 questions (~10 minutes), and you'll uncover:
- The external problem you solve
- Your method of addressing it
- Your motivation for doing so
About the author
I decode what makes people different and help them build extraordinary things with it. Creator of Innate Edge. Writer of The Zag.
