Simone Stolzoff

And she is a mental health professional that particularly works with entrepreneurs and people navigating uncertainty and change in her life.

But before she became a therapist, her mom was diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness in her early 20s.

And she was really struggling.

She was by her mom's bedside week after week.

And one day, one of their family friends, this guy named Bill, came to visit them.

And Bill said, Emily, how are you doing?

And Emily said, honestly, I'm not doing very well.

I'm riding this roller coaster of anticipatory grief and fear.

I just don't know what I'll do if my mom passes away.

and bill is an oncology doctor so he has lots of experience with people dealing with the end of their life and he told emily something that i i've never forgotten since i heard it which is he said emily the version of yourself that will deal with that tragedy if or when it happens will be born into existence in that moment

And that version of you will have more information, more context and be better equipped to deal with that event than the version of you today.

You have to trust in your future self to solve your future problems.

And I love that statement so much because so often when faced with uncertainty, we have this natural tendency to think about all the things that will go wrong.

We have a natural tendency to rush out to meet our worry, to catastrophize.

And yet by having trust in your future self,

you are able to not have to suffer before something like that comes to be.

And Emily is so glad she got that advice because her mom ended up recovering and is all right.

And Emily didn't have to go through that whole process of grief and suffering unnecessarily because she was able to trust in a future version of herself.

And I think so often when we are at a crossroads or at the precipice of something or at a place that we've never been before, we have the ability

to trust in our future self, to be able to weather that storm, handle that setback, adapt or swerve if life gives you a challenge.