I didn’t learn this particular meditation from anyone else it’s just something I made up at one point and have been doing for around 10 years now.

First I get myself totally relaxed and into a peaceful state. Then I imagine a special room in my mind which has two chairs facing each other. I sit in one chair, and in the chair opposite me, I visualize my future self five years from now. He appears as the ideal “me” I’m striving to become. He’s physically fit, strong, brave, confident, driven, passionate, enthusiastic, etc. We have a conversation for 5-10 minutes where I ask him questions, and he willingly answers them. He usually looks at me almost with a sense of nostalgia and compassion, since he knows where I am right now as well as the challenges I’m dealing with, challenges he’s long since overcome.

Eventually my future self leaves. Then I get up and take his seat, and my past self from five years ago enters the room and takes the first seat. So now I’m the future self (Steve 2005) looking back on my past self (Steve 2000). I take a moment to remember what my life was like exactly five years ago, so I can recall what that past Steve is experiencing. Now he’s asking me questions about his future (my present), and I’m providing the answers. I’m often amazed to look back and see just how trivially easy his challenges seem to me today, even though I remember that they appeared much grander when I was in his shoes. I take the time to reassure Steve 2000 that everything turns out well for Steve 2005. I also let him know what things I haven’t yet solved that I’m still working on.

Then I do one more step and fast-forward time by five years. So now I’m Steve 2010, and I’m facing Steve 2005. I’m looking back on my present situation from the future from a vantage point where I’ve already solved my biggest challenges. Now I see my Steve 2005 asking the same questions I was previously asking Steve 2010, and I’m able to answer them with confidence and certainty.

Then I imagine all three of us in the room together (Steve 2000, Steve 2005, Steve 2010), and I visualize all three of our bodies becoming translucent. We walk into each other and blend into one being in a flash of light. When this happens I’m often overwhelmed by a release of emotion the feeling is somewhat different each time I experience it. We become an integrated whole, a single being who exists outside of time but has been splintered in order to experience the sensation of growth and change.

As I slowly bring myself out of this meditation, I feel very peaceful and calm. But the most important benefit is a feeling of oneness, a sense that I’m more than just a physical being moving forward through time. I feel like an integrated being who exists at all times but is merely focusing his consciousness on a particular time in order to experience it more fully. When I’m in this state of mind, I see the present moment as something contained within my being instead of the more common perception of being a person contained within the reality of the present moment. This has the effect of melting present-moment concerns and replacing them with a feeling of expansiveness and transcendence. My new perception causes my present-reality problems to shrink, which makes them far easier to resolve, sometimes almost trivially easy.

I encourage you to try this meditation at least once to see if you find it as beneficial as I do.

Copyright © Steve Pavlina

Steve Pavlina
Personal Development for Smart People
http://www.stevepavlina.com
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog (blog)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles (articles)

Steve is intensely growth-oriented. He trained in martial arts, ran the L.A. Marathon, and graduated from college in three semesters with two degrees. He can juggle, count cards at blackjack, and make damn good guacamole. Steve is also a polyphasic sleeper, sleeping just 2-3 hours per day and only 20 minutes at a time. So chances are good that he’s awake right now.

I did well at school and it was assumed that I’d go onto
university. I wasn’t happy at home and being keen to move
out I end up leaving school after 5th year to study for a
degree in Hotel and Catering Management at Strathclyde
Uni. Well my heart was never really in it and I dropped out
after 1st year, against all advice.

I went to live with my aunt in north London and found a job in
the newsagent’s kiosk in the Strand Palace Hotel. I was
very keen to visit Greece. I’d a very romantic notion of it.
None of my friends were interested so it was either go
alone or not at all. I saved up from my meagre wages and
booked an open return on the coach to Athens in June
1978. I think it cost £25 return.

I planned to travel down through the Peloponese and then
do some island hopping. I was not impressed by Athens
but had already paid for a 3-night hotel stay in there. The
train journey down to Kalamata in the Peloponese was
wonderful, a narrow gauge railway, the carriages had
wooden slated seats. I was the only tourist on the train. I
then visited Crete, Rhodes, Kos, and Kalmynos. It was in
my next port of call, Samos, that I met my husband. He was
doing his 2-year military service. Although I did think that I’d
fallen in love, I thought be sensible you have heard all these
stories about holidays romances. Suffice to stay I was back
in Samos a few months later. He finished his national
service just before Christmas 1979 and we were married in
Glasgow in February 1980.

We had been so intent on just being together that we hadn’t
really thought through how we were going to live. My
husband had studied at a naval college before his national
service but we didn’t want him to go and work in the
merchant navy. He couldn’t even work when he first came
over to the UK, until his work permit was sorted out.

We decided that the best way to save up the money for the
deposit for our own home was for me to do a “live-in” job as
a housekeeper. We would be provided with a small flat to
live in and have virtually no expenses. We managed to
stand that for a year and had saved £5000, enough for a
deposit on a place of our own. My husband now had a
steady job at the Hyde Park Hotel, so we could apply for a
mortgage.

I continued with a succession of menial temporary jobs. By
1982, I was getting fed up, so enrolled in a secretarial
course at a private college. This paid off; I found a job as
PA/secretary in a publisher’s office. Little did I know but this
would be the high point of my career to the present day. I
worked a 32 and a half hour week, was reasonably paid, I
had an office junior to do the routine tasks and work was
great fun. The company published 2 magazines, one was a
naturist magazine, Health and Efficiency, and the other a
bodybuilding magazine.

However we were living in a one bedroom flat with no
garden in East London. We couldn’t afford to buy
something bigger or in a more salubrious area. We were
thinking about having a family, so when my husband saw
Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire advertising for staff, we
though why not move to Scotland, housing would certainly
be a lot cheaper. My husband got the job at Gleneagles and
he moved up, leaving me to sell our flat in London. He lived
in staff accommodation at Gleneagles and started house
hunting.

He found a house in Muthill, near Crieff. It was quite large
so I decided to try my hand at bed and breakfast and we
registered with an agency that sent German kids over to the
UK to stay with a family and receive English lessons. That
wasn’t exactly a roaring success. In 1986 I saw an advert
for market research interviewers and decided to apply. I did
my first survey in Pitlochry. It was quite hard at first but I did
quite enjoy being out and about and chatting to loads of
different people.

However I discovered I was pregnant in the Autumn of 1986
and when I went for my scan was informed that it was
twins! My husband was in his 2nd year as a mature student
at Stirling University. We thought it would be better if we
could move nearer Stirling, as he needed the car to get to
university and I would be pretty stuck in the village with twin
babies. Our house in Muthill took ages to sell but we
moved to Tullibody, in February 1988.

In the spring I went back to work as a market research
interviewer. It fitted in well with family life, as I would go out
to work evenings and weekends and we didn’t need to pay
for any childcare. As the boys grew up and had a nursery
place when they were 4, I thought I should be doing
something better than trailing around asking a whole load
of questions. I saw places funded by the European Social
Fund for women to study for an HNC in Admin at the local
college. They were even offering free creche places. I had
been thinking about going back to university and was
advised that it would be easier to gain admission if I could
provide evidence of recent study.

The year at college was harder work than I had envisaged,
then the 4 years at university, studying for a business
studies degree, were even harder, and I was still doing
market research most weekends. Now I hardly thought I
was going to be headhunted into a top management
position when I completed my studies but I did think I’d be
able to find a semi-decent job.

After looking around a bit for a job, I decided that I would try
to start my own business. I wanted to work locally
weekdays during the day. I knew that there was a strong
demand locally for domestic cleaners and thought I would
try setting up a domestic cleaning service. Sure enough my
research was correct there was demand and after a few
leaflet drops locally and a few personal recommendations, I
started to advertise for staff. After a year and a half I had 7
part time staff. However things were not going smoothly, I
was doing cleaning every day myself and there always
seemed to be at least one staff member off. The quality
began to drop if I was always on hand to crack the whip. I
was hardly making any profit and was spending around 30
hours a week just cleaning, never mind wages. weekly
rotas, leaflet drops. I realised that I would have to expand to
be profitable but couldn’t find reliable staff to maintain
quality. I’d been doing quite a lot of work cleaning rented
staff accommodation, between lets for a company that was
relocating to the Stirling area. They were having a new office
custom built for them. The office manager verbally assured
me that I would have the contract to clean the new office. I
thought that this would be the salvation of the business, as I
could easily supervise employees while on one site. The
logistics of the domestic cleaning were very complicated.
However the contract never came to fruition. The office
manager told me that my business was too small to take on
the contract and her deputy told me that they were legally
bound to take on the cleaning contractor that the whole
business park used. Who knows what the truth was but
basically I was left in the lurch. I decided to give up the
business.

I drifted back into market research telling myself that I would
just do the more interesting social survey work. I started
with a company who only did social surveys and was told
there was plenty of work available. I think I had about 3 jobs
from them over 6 months. When I was doing a sex survey
for them in Perth I bumped into another interviewer. She
told me that the company she worked for were about to start
a big social survey where the same families would be
interviewed every year for the next 3 years. I phoned the
area manager the next day, we hit it off and things seemed
to be going well. After a few months the area manager
asked me to apply for the position of deputy. Believe it or
not, as deputy manager I was still paid by the hour. I
actually had more hassle, made less money and had less
flexibility than working as an interviewer. I still had to go out
interviewing and would get home in the evening to a pile of
faxes and phone messages, when I just wanted to relax.

I lasted around 6 months as deputy. I rationalised that I had
tried studying, tried a promoted post, I wasn’t that ambitious
and no employer seemed prepared to offer me a decent
job, so I would have to be realistic and just plod on as an
interviewer. Well that lasted for around a year then the area
manger was forced to retire at 65 and the new manager
wanted to greatly reduce my work on the annual social
survey and force me to do all other sorts of surveys I wasn’t
interested in.

I was wracking my brain about what on earth I was going to
do to earn a crust. I had started thinking that I would like to
start a travel business. It was a growth market, I wouldn’t
need any employees, and I could work from home. The
Internet was really catching on (this was 2002) and I thought
that it would allow me, to gain some market exposure, even
as a small fish. I also thought it would be wonderful to work
in a field in which I had a great personal interest. I signed
up with a flight supplier as a travel broker in August 2002.

That was almost two years ago. I am still working as a
market research interviewer and the business is slowly
growing. It’s been an ongoing dilemma to me, whether to
give up the interviewing and just concentrate on the
business. At some points I have been doing market
research six days a week, so really have not had much time
or energy to devote to the business. However I have been
loathed to give up the steady income. By the same token if I
don’t focus on the business then it will never really take off.

My initial business was Europe a la Carte. I thought that
there was a niche in the market to assist people who were
looking for something different to the traditional package
holiday, put together a tailor made trip to Europe. It is
possible to do this yourself on the Internet but it’s pretty time
consuming. I reckoned that there was a significant minority
of people who would value some assistance with planning
and booking their trip.

From enquiries I received I began to realise that there was
demand for cultural and activity holidays in Europe. The
sister site, European Cultural & Activity Tours, was started in
January 2003. May aim was to build up a good selection of
holidays offered by small specialist suppliers throughout
Europe.

I have to say that I am extremely lucky that one of my sons is
really good on the computer. He has designed my sites
and databases. My other son has also helped me with
newsletters and photos.

I have begun to get more bookings and last week I had my
first repeat customer. I have learnt a lot in the last two years
about IT, the Internet and marketing. I have tried my hand at
writing articles for the websites.

I have had some interesting trips to meet up with suppliers
and visits to the areas that I promote. I have worked really
hard but I haven’t really minded that as I have, on the whole,
enjoyed the work. I am working toward my dream of having
a profitable business in a field I find fascinating. I believe
that I have found what I want to do now that I am grown up!

Karen is a travel consultant and writer specialising in travel
to Europe. She has two websites:
http://www.europealacarte.co.uk
http://www.europe-culture-activity-tours.com