Bite-Sized Self-Care Challenge Day 12
Be Kind to Future You: day 12 of the QUALITY BOSS 30-day self-care challenge.
Welcome to day 12 of the self-care challenge! You can catch up here if needed.
Today’s Bite-Sized Self-Care: Do Something Kind for Future You
I came across this idea while reading Wil Wheaton’s memoir, Still Just a Geek1. The concept is simple: future you is someone you love and care about, and if you can do something now that will make their (your) life easier, why not?
Despite my initial skepticism, I decided to try it out. I wanted to see if I would feel grateful that my past self had already done some of my chores, or not. My experiment was also fueled by BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits, and the idea that to build lasting habits, you should start with the smallest possible change that leads toward your desired habit. I’ve always wanted to be a person who, at all times, has a clean kitchen. So, to be kind to my future self, and work on building the clean kitchen habit, I set out to put my dirty dishes into the dishwasher (a tiny building block of an always clean kitchen), instead of leaving them in the sink.
And you know what happened? Once the kitchen was clean, and I had put my dirty dishes into the dishwasher immediately on several occasions, when I would consider leaving a dirty dish in the sink, I would think about how nice it was that the sink was clean. And then I would feel guilty. I was feeling guilty about how disappointed future me would be and how she would miss out on this feeling of gratitude for a clean sink!
Today’s Challenge:
Instead of feeling obligated to make the bed, put your dishes in the dishwasher, or any other small task that you can complete in a few minutes, think about how future you will feel when they (you) see that this task has already been done. Feels pretty nice, doesn’t it?
What do you think future you would appreciate?
To our future selves,
Brie
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