Coming to you live from Bali, Indonesia—"The Island of Gods"—where Cameron and I first met and started hosting sunset silent discos called Groove with Gaia. Five years later, we’re back to round out our 3-month adventure before returning to the mountains of Western North Carolina. This picture is from our recent water blessing, purifying ourselves as we enter a new phase of life.

‍

Hey Fam,

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I don’t have the time for that”?

Let’s be honest, that’s bullshit. It’s not about time; it’s about priorities. And when you reclaim the power to consciously choose what matters, everything changes.

This month’s mantra is Prioritize Future Self.

Think about it: Future Self is what you will experience next, whether that’s a minute from now or a decade. So, this mantra is all about making decisions with your future experiences in mind.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: doesn’t this contradict the whole “be present” thing? Not really.

Being present is crucial—it’s where true joy, bliss, harmony, and love reside. When we live in the past, we get stuck in depression. When we live in the future, we get anxious. So yes, being present is necessary to feel whole.

But here’s the twist: being present doesn’t mean ignoring the future. It’s about the choices we make today—the little decisions and micro-decisions—that shape our tomorrow.

If I eat a pint of ice cream every day, my future self won’t thank me. If I stay in a job I hate, my future self will be full of regrets.

It’s easy to say health is a priority, but if you’re choosing junk food daily, it’s not really your priority. We can all claim to care about the environment, but if we’re still tossing plastic bottles in the trash, our actions tell a different story.

These so-called priorities are illusions. The real priorities are revealed through our choices. Choice determines priority.

So, let’s break it down and get real about how to truly prioritize our future selves.

⚙️ Tools and Tricks to Prioritize Future Self

In past mantras, we’ve often focused on software applications to help us achieve our goals. This time, let’s broaden our perspective on technology. Technology is simply the application of knowledge for practical purposes. Just as software is a technology, so are yoga and pranayama.

Think of it this way: your iPhone runs on an operating system (OS), right? Well, our bodies are like the OS, and our minds are the specific apps. Just like your phone, we have programs running within us—habits, routines, thought patterns. And the best part? We have the power to inspect these programs for bugs and rewrite them entirely.

So, let’s dive into a few different technologies—different applications we can install on our operating systems to better prioritize our future selves.

📲 #1 Order of Operations (Over Simultaneity)

When you set out to do something, do it. Don’t try to write a newsletter while playing video games. We’re surprisingly bad at multitasking, despite what we might like to believe. Make the decision to show up fully for what is in front of you. Apply full presence to a task or an initiative, cultivate deep focus, and make this the default program running on your OS. This is a great way to prioritize your future self.

A Recent Example:

In 2020, I started Modern Mantra with a former co-founder while also making the decision with Cameron to grow Groove with Gaia more intentionally after hosting a series of silent discos on the beach. From 2020 to 2021, I was an independent consultant, working on Groove with Gaia and Modern Mantra. From 2022 to the end of 2023, I was split between Modern Mantra and Groove with Gaia. Two organizations, two energies, two teams, and two structures.

At the end of 2023, after growing Modern Mantra to over $1M USD in annual recurring revenue, I sold my shares to my co-founder and decided to focus full-time on Groove with Gaia with my life partner.

This was the best decision I could’ve made.

It allowed me to consolidate my creative life force into growing a single organism. I recognized how split I had been for the past decade—always having side projects, always running things simultaneously, and subconsciously trying to hedge my bets. This approach meant nothing ever flourished as I wanted because there were too many plan Bs and Cs.

If my finite attention and creative capacity is a jug of water, I was consistently trying to fill multiple cups at once, which meant each cup got only a bit of water. I’ve found the best way to create the life I truly want is to double down fully, truly commit, and pour my water into one cup until it overflows before moving to the next. This is a totally different application to install on our operating systems. Once I got a taste of this deep focus, and as I continue to see what I am capable of, there’s no going back.

📲 #2 Cost-Benefit Analysis

This is an oldie but goodie rooted in management practices, but it’s useful across all domains of daily life. What is the cost, and what is the benefit of doing a particular thing? What is the output for the input? Creating this framework and starting to think in terms of cost-benefit or impact-to-effort helps us make better decisions. Impact-to-effort and cost-benefit are different frameworks that boil down to the same core principle: considering the output for the input.

A Recent Example:

At the beginning of 2018, I decided to stop consuming alcohol. Despite being deeply normalized and widely accepted, alcohol would rank at the bottom of my preference list among consciousness-altering substances.

I started drinking in high school, and in college, it was ingrained in the social culture. It seemed worth it to wake up feeling terrible or to forget the night before.

In early 2018, after a party on the beach in Bali, I was driving to a warung (traditional Indonesian restaurant) for some late-night food, still feeling tipsy. It was dark, and I encountered a pile of construction materials on the road. I had to swerve around it and came off my bike. I walked away with a few scratches and bruises, but the experience prompted me to reflect on the role of alcohol in my life.

I ran a non-formal cost-benefit analysis. The costs were clear: it’s toxic, dehydrating, can cause long-term damage, makes me feel awful the next day, and has the potential to make me forget everything. The benefits? Crickets. Maybe “fun”?

Realizing I wasn’t deriving much benefit, I changed my relationship with alcohol. I began going out sober and fell in love with waking up feeling 100%.

Using a cost-benefit analysis framework helps us make decisions that prioritize our well-being and align with our long-term goals.

📲 #3 Delaying Gratification

Getting into a practice of delaying gratification is crucial. Whether it's locking your phone so apps are only accessible for a limited time each day or saying no to short-term pleasures to create better long-term prospects, this requires a high level of discipline. It’s about being willing and able to prioritize future benefits over immediate rewards.

A Recent Example:

One example from our life is transitioning from freelancers working on client projects to founders building a business. During this transition, we had to say NO to many projects and opportunities that offered immediate income. This was tough as our hourly consulting rates kept increasing. However, taking on more clients meant continuing to be the product instead of creating products. This reliance on freelance work was not sustainable.

Instead, we focused on building processes, creating products, designing offers, and committing to productized income. We worked on our business instead of always in it. This required delaying immediate gratification for future abundance through a clear, consistent mission and scalable product suite.

Now, we’re about to launch our new Groove with Gaia 2.0 website and offerings. Despite not having a proper website yet, we’ve had 50 people experience Yin Yang Livin, recalibrating and rebalancing their creative channels.

We now have our first 10 founders moving through Dharmic Design, rebirthing their businesses and reorienting their relationship to work. We are opening up 10 more spaces for our community to kickoff in June, see here if you are feeling ready to dial into mission.

The last six months have been an exercise in delaying gratification—building a scalable foundation for our mission that will sustain us and deeply impact our community.

Delaying gratification is about making present sacrifices for future gains. It’s about envisioning the long-term benefits and staying committed to the process. This practice not only builds discipline but also aligns our actions with our future goals.

🧘🏾‍♂️ In Conclusion

These are different applications you can install into your operating system to cultivate a mindset that benefits your future self. By becoming truly present with who we are and where we are, we can also develop the habit of making present decisions that will benefit our future selves.

One last practice to top it all off is to thank yourself when your dreams and visions come to life. Give yourself a hug, celebrate, and express gratitude for the decisions you made in the past that put you in this scenario. This practice reinforces positive behaviors and makes it the default application that our OS opens when we encounter tempting “shiny objects” that aren’t in service of our highest and best selves.

Thank you for being here and for your presence. I’m truly looking forward to connecting more on this journey. We have a set of exciting initiatives planned for the second half of the year that will make this community even more fruitful!

Aho,

Elijah 🌴

P.S. We deeply appreciate any feedback you may have on our newsletter (it will take you just 1 minute), to help us continue to make it better for you.