Possible Selves
Three versions of your future compete in your mind — expand the field.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Psychology divides our future imaginings into three possible selves: hoped-for, feared, and expected. After a change, the brain over-constrains this set, often because of stereotypes about people in our new situation. Shankar experienced this as a child-free woman weighed down by societal norms she'd absorbed. The framework is a prompt to catch those constraints and deliberately generate more expansive, positive possible selves.
Origin
After multiple miscarriages left Shankar unable to build the family she'd assumed defined a woman's worth, she confronted how much her sense of possible selves had been narrowed by inherited cultural assumptions, and used the concept to reopen her imagined future.
Core principles
- 01We carry three kinds of possible selves: hoped-for, feared, and expected.
- 02After a change, the brain over-constrains which possible selves feel available to us.
- 03That constraint comes from stereotypes and assumptions about people in our new situation.
- 04Change is a rare chance to crack open imagination and generate new, more positive possible selves.
How to run it
- 1
Map your three possible selves
Write out your hoped-for selves, feared selves, and expected selves to see the field your brain is working with.
- 2
Surface the constraints
Identify the stereotypes or assumptions narrowing which selves feel available — e.g. beliefs about the unemployed, a caregiver, a dropout, a child-free woman.
Pro tip Change acts as a point of revelation, exposing previously hidden beliefs so you can examine them.
- 3
Challenge the assumptions
Ask whether you actually believe the limiting assumption, treating it as a question rather than a given.
Watch out Unwinding beliefs absorbed in childhood takes time and repeated effort.
- 4
Generate new possible selves
At the inflection point, deliberately imagine new, more positive versions of who you could become.
Pro tip Ask 'Who else can this person be?' given all the wisdom and experience you've already accrued.
In the wild
Having absorbed the message that motherhood was where a woman finds worth, Shankar found her possible selves constrained after infertility. She had to challenge whether she actually believed a full life required kids.
→ She unwound the inherited belief and expanded the futures she could imagine for herself.
Common mistakes
Accepting the constrained set as reality
The narrowed possible selves feel like objective limits but are largely products of stereotype and assumption.
Only brainstorming, never acting
Generating new possible selves is not enough; you must do the hard work to actually realize them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone at an inflection point who feels their future has been foreclosed.
Not ideal for
People needing concrete execution steps rather than imaginative reframing.
From the transcript
“there possible selves come in three different categories. So we have our hoped for selves... There's feared selves... And then there's our expected selves”
“we can at these moments of inflection crack open our imagination and actually generate new, more positive possible selves”
From the episode
Dr. Maya Shankar: The Science of Decision Making
Dr. Maya Shankar