Bringing Your Happy Place Home

NEXTletter is your practice for shaping what’s next. More than a newsletter, it’s a space to pause, reflect, and experiment. Every other Friday, you’ll get one question, two perspectives, and one experiment — to help you create the future you most want to live in.

Author

Frederik Pferdt
January 16, 2026

Prefer to listen 📻 > click here.

Hello Future-Shapers,

Over the last week, in twelve different future coaching conversations, I noticed the same sentence surface again and again. Sometimes whispered. Sometimes said with longing. Sometimes with a sigh.

“I just want to go somewhere else.”

Germany. Winter. Gray skies. Heavy news. And a shared fantasy of elsewhere. 

But I hear the same longing in conversations far beyond Germany. In leaders, founders, parents, friends across different countries and climates.

A sunnier place. A warmer place. A place where life feels lighter. California comes up often. So do beaches, islands, southern Europe. I get it. I live close to the ocean. Sunlight is generous here. Nature makes it easier to breathe.

And yet, after years of working with people on their future, one pattern keeps repeating itself.

We often imagine the future as a place.
And we attach happiness to geography.

But happiness rarely moves in when we do.

Because what we are really looking for is not a new location.
It is a different inner climate.

A different way of being with ourselves.

That’s the insight I want to share with you today.

ONE QUESTION

If you didn’t change your location at all, how could you change the way you live where you are?

The most meaningful gift isn’t something you unwrap. It’s the future you help someone create.

Use FUTUREREADY as your code and get 50% off our online course “Your 8 Days Future-Ready Mindstate Training” here, Future Creator!

You can also share the code once with someone you love or care about and who you think might need it. Just forward the link or the email.

TWO PERSPECTIVES

1️⃣  The Inner World Perspective

There is a Zen teaching that has stayed with me for years. It goes something like this:

“Is there a place where there is no place to be happy?”

It sounds almost too simple. And yet it cuts deep.

We often postpone joy. We say: when I get there, then I’ll feel better. When the weather changes. When life calms down. When I finally move.

But joy, creativity, and aliveness are not properties of places. They are capacities we carry.

I’ve seen this again and again at Google’s Garage. Teams would arrive tired, pressured, sometimes skeptical. The space helped, yes. But what really changed things was permission. Permission to play. To explore. To think differently. Once that inner shift happened, people became creative anywhere. Even in the most ordinary meeting rooms.

The place didn’t do the work.
The mindstate did.

You can dance in the rain. Or you can wait for perfect weather forever.

2️⃣ The Environment Matters Perspective

At the same time, let’s be honest. Our surroundings do influence us.

Research consistently shows that natural light improves mood and energy. Exposure to nature lowers stress hormones. Even images or sounds of water can calm the nervous system. Our brains are deeply responsive to space.

This is not imagination. It is biology.

But here’s the overlooked part: you don’t have to relocate your life to benefit from this.

You can redesign your environment where you are.

That’s what we did at the Garage. We didn’t just talk about creativity. We shaped spaces that invited it. Light. Materials. Openness. Movement. Small signals that told people: you can show up differently here.

You can do the same at home. Today.

You don’t need Hawaii.
You need intention.

ONE EXPERIMENT

For the next seven days, try this:

  1. Name your dream place. Not the location, but the feeling. Calm. Lightness. Freedom. Warmth. Creativity.

  2. Identify one sensory element of that place. Light. Sound. Texture. Scent.

  3. Bring that element into your day. Open the curtains earlier. Add a plant. Play ocean sounds while working. Sit by a window. Change the music you start your morning with.

  4. Create a small daily ritual that anchors this feeling. Five minutes is enough.

  5. Notice what shifts. Not in your circumstances, but in how you respond to them.

You may still want to travel. To move. To explore new places. That’s beautiful.

Just don’t postpone happiness until you arrive somewhere else.

Sometimes, the most powerful future move is not going away.
It’s coming home to yourself.

Life works. But something inside you wants more.

Not more to do. More alignment. More clarity. More you. My 1:1 Future Being Coaching is a space to reconnect with the future you actually want to live. Together, we uncover what’s quietly holding you back and turn insight into real steps you can take now, in your life as it is. This is for people who are ready to stop waiting for the right moment and start shaping what comes next from within. If that feels familiar, you’re invited.

My recommendations

You might have noticed something while reading this.

None of this requires a recommendation for where to go next.
It asks a different question.

How do you want to feel in your future?

That question is at the heart of my Future Being Coaching. Not about making big life moves, but about shifting your inner posture toward what’s ahead. So your future feels more spacious, more intentional, more like yours, no matter where you are standing.

The same is true for the 8-Day Future Mindstate Training. It doesn’t ask you to go anywhere. It meets you where you are. At home. On a train. Between meetings. One small daily practice at a time. The journey comes to you.

And then there are my books. They’ve traveled to many places I couldn’t. Different countries. Different climates. Different lives. You can take them anywhere you want to feel differently. Sometimes that’s the most portable future tool we have.

No relocation required.
Just a willingness to arrive more fully in this moment.

Podcast - Best of 2025

Many of the most meaningful moments from The Future Is HOW this year had one thing in common:
they circled back to relationships.

One of my guests, Robert Waldinger, leads the longest-running study on what makes a good life, conducted at Harvard University. Its conclusion is strikingly consistent: the strongest predictor of a long, healthy, and happy life is the quality of our close relationships.

Not how many people we know.
But how connected we feel.

That insight, along with many others, stayed with me.
So to begin this new year, I created a Best of 2025 episode of the podcast.

It’s not a retrospective.
It’s a reminder.

A reminder that the future we want to live longer in, feel healthier in, and feel more alive in, is built through how we relate to one another.

🎧 Listen to The Future Is HOW · Best of 2025 here.

The future isn’t something we wait for.
It’s something we practice. Together.

With love,
Frederik