Small Nudges, Big Realities: Stepping Into Your Future Self

Every year on my birthday, I sit down to rewatch Interstellar. It’s more than a movie for me. It’s a reminder to think deeper about time, possibility, and the choices we make every day. There’s one scene that has always stuck with me. This is when Cooper enters the tesseract and sends messages back to his daughter. At first, she believes it’s a supernatural event, but later realizes it was her dad all along. He wasn’t rewriting the past. He was nudging it, aligning it, ensuring that the future unfolds as it was always meant to.

That moment is powerful for me because it flips the way we usually think about time. Instead of a straight line, maybe it’s a loop. Maybe the future already exists, and our role is to find the thread that connects us to it.

Small Nudges, Big Realities

I see this play out every week in my practice. Healing, growth, and transformation often come not from big leaps but from small nudges. From the moments where someone chooses to align with a healthier version of themselves.

Like the middle-aged woman who came to me before hiking the Grand Canyon. She had battled Achilles tendinopathy in the past and wasn’t sure how her body would hold up. But from the moment she told me about her plan, I knew she would conquer it. And sure enough, she did. Not only did she finish the hike, she surprised herself by how strong she felt along the way.

Or the cancer survivor who was told she would just have to live with pain and tightness in her shoulders. She carried that weight for too long until she came to see me. Through focused work, that constant tension reduced into something manageable. For her, it wasn’t about erasing the past, but about stepping into a future where she no longer had to live defined by discomfort.

Then there was the professional athlete who had lost lean muscle after back surgery due to nerve damage. For months he thought it was gone for good. But with time, patience, and the right nudges, we watched his strength return. The body has a way of remembering its future when it’s given the right chance.

And I’ll never forget the patient who had struggled with low blood oxygen levels. His scores had stayed below average for years. But after committing to proper breathing practices, he came back with results better than he had ever seen. What changed? A small shift in awareness that opened up a new reality. Or perhaps the reality his future self had already chosen.

Choosing the Future You Step Into

These aren’t miracles, they’re reminders that we all have access to multiple versions of ourselves. Some are weighed down by limitation. Others are lifted by possibility. We may not control every circumstance, but we can choose which reality to align with. And often, all it takes is the right nudge. Science even points to this. Physicists have shown that expectation itself can change outcomes. One study showed that participants, after a mindset/optimism intervention, observed more positive stimuli than chance would predict. Suggesting that focus or expectation may influence randomness.

What we call luck often isn’t random at all, it is the

brain filtering reality to highlight what matches belief and focus.

People who expect opportunities (like finding the best parking spot) tend to find them, not because of magic, but because their attention is tuned differently. In other words, the future you expect is the one you are most likely to experience.

That is why the hikers, the survivors, the athletes, and the everyday people I work with often surprise themselves. They chose to focus on possibility instead of limitation, and their bodies followed. Focus is not magic, it is alignment. It is leaning into the version of yourself that is already waiting.

Interstellar reminds us that love can move through time. But if we look closer, what gives love that power is focus and intent. Love isn’t just a feeling. It is the deliberate act of directing your attention, your energy, and your will toward someone or something that matters. That is why it transcends distance, why it shapes outcomes, and why it bends reality in ways science is only beginning to hint at.

When you focus with intent, whether on your health, your goals, or your future, you create alignment. The world may offer countless possible futures, but your focused intent determines which one becomes real. That is why patients who dare to see themselves in a stronger, freer version often step into it. They are not just hoping, they are choosing with focus, fueled by love; for their own body and wellbeing.

The path to your better future may already be out there. The question is: will you set your intent and step into it?