Crafting Your Future: Make a Blueprint for Success

Let’s take a journey into the future—but not with a time machine. Instead, we’ll do a powerful mental exercise designed to help you shape the future you desire, whether it's improving your mobility, strengthening your relationship with your horse, or achieving new levels of well-being and connection.

When we create a compelling “future memory,” it  gives your brain a roadmap to make better choices today, leading to long-term success. By imagining the feelings, movements, and experiences you want in your future, you empower yourself to take actionable steps now. This episode is filled with practical advice, inspiration, and an invitation to step into a life of new possibilities.

Resources:

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Email mary@marydebono.com

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical, veterinary, or professional training advice. Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses. 

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of horses and their human companions.

Recognizing the profound connection between equine and human movement, Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for the equestrian world. Her methods have helped horses and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the horse-human bond

Mary's flagship online program, "Move with Your Horse," offers equestrians a unique opportunity to experience the benefits of Feldenkrais® while also learning her signature hands-on work for horses. This transformative approach has helped riders and their equine partners achieve harmony, both in and out of the saddle.

As a speaker and educator, Mary has touched the lives of equestrians across the globe, empowering them to unlock their full potential through mindful movement and enhanced body awareness.

Discover the power of Debono Moves and transform your equestrian journey. Visit https://www.marydebono.com/you-and-your-horse to learn more about Mary's unique work.

Because you and your horse deserve to feel great. Together. 

Transcript

Hi. Today we're going to take a little trip into the future. And no, not with a time machine, but with the power of our minds. And this little exercise I have for you today can help ensure to the best of our ability, that you create the future that you desire. And it makes today better, too. I want to add that, so in case we're meeting for the first time.

My name is Mary Debono, and this is the easier movement Happier Horses podcast. I'm so glad you're here. So, yeah, let's talk about the future. Now, of course, the future is anywhere from the very next second to thousands of years into the future. But what I'd like to invite you to do for the purposes of this exercise is to pick a timeframe where you would like to see a significant improvement.

And it could be in your, you know, your mobility, your physical health and wellness. It could be in your horsemanship, your relationship with your horse. It could be in your business. I mean, it could be really anything. And we can actually, we'll touch on a number of different things, but pick a time frame. So, again, it could be a month, it could be six months, it could be five years.

It's kind of nice to have enough time. So I'm gonna say at least a few months where you can imagine a really compelling change. Cause what we're doing is not going to be daydreaming, but it's going to be helping you craft a compelling future memory, if you will, so that your brain has a blueprint for what you really want. Because we make decisions all day long that affect our day to day life.

They affect us in the moment and they affect us in the future. And a lot of times, the negative consequences don't come until the future. Like, it comes from accumulation of not the best decisions. So what we want to do is, again, create this idea of a compelling future memory that we're actually drawn to so that our brain unconsciously even wants to get to that future, okay, to that future.

And it helps us make even those unconscious decisions, because, again, so many of them are unconscious. It helps us make better decisions today to help us get there, okay? So, again, I'm going to ask you to think about a time in the future. I mean, just for the sake of our podcast, we're going to say five years, but maybe you want to choose six months, okay? It doesn't have to be.

And you could do this in several different times. So this is just one exercise, right? You can. You can change it, and the next time you do it. You can pick a different timeframe, but let's just say five years, and really imagine yourself in this five years, okay? Like, imagine yourself five years from now. So now maybe that's even hard for you to imagine. You know, it's funny.

I have a very dear friend, and she's almost exactly ten years older than I am. She's an amazing lady who does a lot of Feldenkrais, and I always look to her as kind of like my lighthouse. Like, oh, that's what ten years in the future can look like. Right? And she's gone through sadness. She's gone through loss, because as we age, people pass and things happen and things like that.

And she has the most amazing spirit and an incredible vitality about her and incredible human connections as well, and all kinds of wonderful things. So I often, you know, I have her as sort of a bit of a role model, if you will. But we can use ourselves as a role model, too, so we can use our future selves to compel us into that experience that we want to live.

Okay? So, okay, let's think about this. So, five years from now, how do you want to be feeling? How do you want to be moving? You know, I'm a movement teacher, right? I'm a Feldenkrais method teacher, and I teach movement education for horses as well, with the de bono moves and dogs, etcetera. How do you want to be moving? How do you want to be feeling? And, you know, really, really drill down in the fact that, like, you want to feel, like, this warmth in your chest.

Like, you just feel really good, right? There's no stress. You feel relaxed and engaged, powerful. There's a lightness in your shoulders. There's an ease in your movement. There's a vigor of vitality about you, right? Picture yourself if that's what you want, right? And I imagine most of you do. Picture yourself embodying that in the future, if you want to add in a few wrinkles or whatever, be my guest.

Make sure you add a smile. So have it be very positively framed. Okay? And, you know, just think about that. But I am going to encourage you, though, to not be so specific that you're tying your state of well being to a specific location or activity, okay? Because the thing is, life does happen. Things do change, and we don't know what's going to happen from today to five years from now, right?

So we want to be resilient. We want to be able to embody this sense of well being and strength despite whatever happens in the five years. So when you tie it too closely to specific location or activity, then your brain thinks it can only happen with that. And if that changes, or maybe you want to have the same sense of vitality and strength doing other things, well, then they're not really connected.

So have it more general, if you will. Not tied to a specific thing. It's almost as if, like, if you're. I don't know if you've played around with, like, any imaging or photo editing, they have those background removers now where you can just remove the background, kind of have it like that, where you're not focusing on the background, that it's more about how you feel. And I'm going to also say this.

You want to really step into that image as well. You want to really feel it. You want to be looking out of your own eyes and just kind of notice the sky is blue, there's greenery around me. Again, not super specific, but maybe in the type of atmosphere that you enjoy, maybe there's trees, maybe there's, you know, animals, you know, have it be general and what you like.

Okay. And how you enjoy yourself. And then again, moving through that in a way that feels really, really good and powerful to you. Okay. And really infuse it with a lot of gratitude. Like, be really, really grateful that you're able to do this, whether, you know, whatever kind of movement you're doing and, you know, really feel your body and then start to really not only just be grateful for that end result, but be grateful for the steps you took to get there.

Like, you might want to be grateful of how you ate in a really healthy way. You know, that you ate a lot of really fresh greens and, you know, just all kinds of healthy, maybe healthy organic food. And you took specific steps. You maybe wanna be grateful for your Feldenkrais practice, right. That you committed to doing a movement improvement practice. Okay. And shout out to my students, right, this is what we do together, right.

We have a movement practice so that we can feel good and we can move through life with greater ease. That helps us emotionally as well. Maybe you want to be grateful for learning about de bono moves, which you've learned to help your horse with. So think of all the different steps. Maybe you're really grateful because you're trekking through Nepal and you were able to afford that trip because you took certain steps to enhance your financial security.

So give yourself, like, feel that gratitude. Be grateful to present day self for allowing you, you, future self to have these great experiences, to feel really good to feel secure, to be grateful for how you nurtured your relationships through the years and think back to specific steps you took that you reached out to that friend that you hadn't heard from in a while, or you took the time to travel to see family members, right?

Or you welcome that neighbor into the neighborhood, right? And you've developed these incredibly deep, rich relationships because of the time you took to nurture them. And the same thing with your animal relationships, right? They're very important to me. I'm sure they're important to you if you're listening to this podcast. So give yourself credit, right? Thank yourself for the steps you took. Maybe again, you've done debono moves with your horses and your dogs, and you've done other things.

You give them lots of good exercise and good grooming and all the best care and the best nutrition and veterinary care. You do all the things to help ensure their life. And not only just their, their life as it exists on its own, but on your deepening your relationship with them, which is so important to both you and your animals. So give yourself credit. Give yourself, be grateful for all those things you did to bring you to this place five years into the future.

Maybe there's certain accolades you've, you've won at work or something, or different success you've had. Maybe you've learned conversational Spanish that you've always wanted to learn, and now you're going on a trip to Spain or Mexico or Argentina and you get to speak in Spanish. Well, give yourself credit for doing the lessons, right? Taking the time, a few minutes a day, an hour a week, or whatever it is to learn that.

So think about different values you have. What do you like to learn about? Maybe you've gotten really, really good at hoof trimming, right? I know. That's one of my things. I love learning about that. I've always loved trimming hooves. It's just so fun and satisfying. Well, think now how good you are five years from now, right? And, and give yourself again credit. Be grateful for having the opportunities to learn that and grateful to present day self for taking the time to learn that and to, you know, over those, over the five years.

And, you know, and then, you know, it can be helpful, too, to have a conversation with this future self in such a way that's like, okay, so you're grateful for all these steps I took. What were some choices that could have been different and just see where that goes. Do that very lightly. It's not about anything in the past. So in other words, we're kind of just, for the purposes of this exercise, we're just saying from today, from this moment to the five years or whatever in the future.

So we're not saying something you did when you were 20 years old, okay? This is like today into the future. And what that'll do is that might open up some new things that you hadn't thought about. So maybe your future self. Well, I'm going to say not maybe. I know your future self is even smarter than you are, and you're already brilliant, and your future self is even smarter.

Right? Your future self has more experience, has more wisdom. So what wisdom can they share with you? What can they tell you about making choices? How can they help you avoid pitfalls like obstacles in your way that. Oh, yeah. You know, I've been meaning to study Spanish, but I don't know, I got too busy now. I let it go. Well, what could future self tell you that can be useful to making a better decision?

A decision that's more in line with what you want now, maybe you don't really want to learn a new language. Don't worry about it then. There's no shoulds here, right? It's not like you should learn a new language or you should have, you know, certain career accolades or anything else. It's, what do you want? So use future self as a. As a resource for giving you some feedback, right?

And saying, oh, by the way, you know, you always get hungry late at night or you get bored or you get distracted or you're putting something off, so you start eating late at night or you have some other activity, or you blow off doing your Feldenkrais lesson because, oh, suddenly it got too late. Well, how could you change that? So that you have that built in, so there's less friction in making these better choices.

So, see what future self can tell you about that. How future self can help guide you to make these better decisions. Okay? So, yeah. And really have fun with us. Have fun with it. Like, you know, do it in a sense of curiosity, playfulness, and. And real gratitude for having the ability, by the way, having our smart minds that we have where we can project into the future, and we can help shape our future by taking specific actions now, safeguarding, for example, our health and our mobility and recognizing the direct link between our emotional health and our physical health.

So being able to move more freely to do the things we want can help us feel better emotionally as well. Really play with this. And. And remember, this isn't about daydreaming. Right? It's about creating a compelling future so that you're basically giving your brain this wonderful map of how you can get there and get there in a way that's enjoyable. The whole process is enjoyable. Okay, so let me know how it goes for you.

Tell me about your future memories, right? Because that's what you're doing. You're creating a future memory and make it real, make it fun, make it really inviting, and step into a life of new possibilities. So thank you so much. Please reach out to me. I'd love to hear about your future memories. So marydebono.com or if you want to ask me about something else or you have some other challenge you're dealing with, let me know and maybe we'll do a podcast for you.

So thank you so much for listening, subscribing, and reviewing the podcast. It helps so very much because so many people and their horses can benefit from this information. So thank you again. I look forward to talking to you real soon. Bye for now.