The Mountain Is You

STEP 4: IMAGINE THEM HANDING YOU THE “KEYS” TO YOUR 
NEW LIFE
Another powerful exercise using your future self is to 
imagine yourself now sitting down with yourself 3, 5, or 
even 7 years ago. It has to be close enough that you can 
relate to this person but far enough that you’ve changed.
Imagine sitting down in a space you used to frequent or 
inhabit. What you’re going to do now is hand them the 
pieces of your current life and all of the information they 
will need to go from who they are then to who you are now.
You can hand them your car keys, your email account for 
your job, your bank account, an outfit, or instructions on 
what to do in terms of career, relationships, or just day-to-
day habits.
Or you can imagine your future self giving you aspects of 
your life now. Imagine them handing you the keys to the 
home you live in, or your wedding band, or anything else 
that is a part of your highest possible future life.
Remember, this process should make you feel calm, af-
firmed, and more self-assured, not the opposite. Fear is 

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BRIANNA WIEST
a hallucination, a trick of the mind and gut. Your future 
self can step in and remind you of all that is possible and 
empower you to live with certainty, clarity, and grace.
R E L E A S I N G Y O U R PA S T I N T O
T H E Q U A N T U M F I E L D
When something happens that scares you and then you 
do not ever get over that fear, you become traumatized.
Trauma is the experience of disconnecting with a funda-
mental source of safety. It happens most severely when 
our attachment to our primary caretakers is compromised. 
But there is truly an infinite number of ways the world 
can traumatize you, and to varying degrees.
There are lots of theories about what trauma is and where 
it comes from. Some believe that it is passed down phys-
ically through DNA.
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Others argue that it is shared 
mentally and emotionally through learned patterns and 
observations. Most commonly, trauma is believed to be an 
interpersonal experience we have in which we were chal-
lenged and then lacked the skills and coping mechanisms 
to rise to it. 
No matter where it came from, if you have some kind 
of lingering trauma, you will know, because you will feel 
it. You will feel it physically in your body. You will feel 
anxiety, tension, fear, terror, sadness, or guilt. It will be 

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displaced. It will not have a clear, direct cause. You will 
overreact to certain things and even when a problem is 
solved, you will still panic. This is the mark of trauma.