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Why We Hold Onto the Familiar – and What Becomes Possible When We Don’t
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.
Frederik Pferdt
December 05, 2025
Prefer to listen 📻 > click here.
Dear Future Friends,
December arrives quietly.
A few days ago, I was in Vancouver visiting old friends for Friendsgiving. We cooked together, laughed together, remembered who we were years ago and who we’ve become. On our last morning, we decided to hike Sea to Sky. The trail was steep, unfamiliar, and far more challenging than any of us expected.
About a third of the way up, the kids stopped. They were flushed and tired, boots slipping on loose gravel, breath coming fast. One of them finally said what the rest of us were secretly thinking:
Can we go back?
And I felt it too. That quiet pull toward the familiar. The part of me that prefers steady ground to uncertain terrain. The part that whispers: You’ve done enough. Turning around is safer.
But we paused, took a breath, and agreed to try just a little more.
One more section. Then another. Then another.
And slowly, something shifted, not in the trail, but in us. The path didn’t get easier. Our legs didn’t magically recover. But by choosing to keep going, we stepped into a different relationship with the unfamiliar.
When we finally reached the ridge, the view opened in a way none of us could have imagined at the bottom. The kids forgot their tired legs. We forgot the slippery rocks. Only one truth remained:
Sometimes the unfamiliar is the only way to reach a view we’ve never seen.
And ever since that morning, one question has stayed with me…Why do we cling to what we know, even when the future is asking us to change?
A personal/professional moment
Recently, a collaboration I cared about deeply came to an end. It wasn’t small. It wasn’t casual. It was a project with vision, weight, and genuine promise.
We had poured time, creativity, and intention into what it could become.
But when the moment came to take the next step into possibility, the choice was made to return to what was familiar. Not because the idea was wrong. Not because the opportunity had vanished. But because the known often feels safer than the unknown.
I felt disappointment. And I felt recognition.
Because I know this place. I think we all do. It’s the threshold between who we are and who we could become: the place where familiar discomfort quietly wins over unfamiliar possibility. Not because we lack courage. But because our biology prefers patterns it already understands.
ONE QUESTION
What becomes possible when we stop choosing what is familiar and start choosing what is possible?
Gift yourself and your loved ones with future for the end of the year
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.
I’ve created a free 31-day Future Calendar on WhatsApp: a one-minute morning ritual to practice stepping into possibility. Each day you’ll receive a short voice message from me and a small prompt a question, a gentle challenge, or an awareness moment. What began as an experiment has already grown into a beautiful circle of more than 170 people showing up with intention each morning. If this feels like something your future self would choose, you’re warmly invited to join us.
TWO PERSPECTIVES
1️⃣ The Brain Favors The Known. Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart reminds us that the brain is built for survival. It conserves energy by returning to what it already understands. It filters experience through memory before imagination. In neuroscience, this is called predictive processing: the brain assumes tomorrow will look like yesterday, and uses less energy by repeating rather than reinventing. Psychologists call this status quo bias, the tendency to select what already exists even when change would move us forward. We see this everywhere in our lives. We stay in jobs that drain us because the next step feels uncertain. Live inside discomfort long enough, and it becomes home. As James Clear writes: We do not rise to the level of our goals. If discomfort has become our internal system, we will return to it, even as we say we want something different. | 2️⃣ The World Now Demands The Unfamiliar. The familiar is no longer holding. Not metaphorically. But structurally, visibly, undeniably. The climate is shifting faster than systems can respond. We cannot meet the future with the habits of the past. Einstein said it long before we felt it fully: No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. The future asks for new neural pathways. Possibility is a discipline we must rehearse. |
ONE EXPERIMENT
Practice unfamiliar gratitude
For one week, try this once a day:
Be grateful not only for what is pleasant, but for what is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or disruptive.
This means noticing moments you would usually resist — and meeting them with a soft thank you.
Can you be grateful…
for the delayed train that forced a pause
for the stranger who tested your patience
for the child who woke sick on the one morning you needed everything to go right
for the oven that refuses to cooperate
for the project that demands more than expected
for the political dysfunction that awakens a desire for something better
for the back pain that slows your pace
for the dishes that will not disappear
for the relative who presses every old button you thought you outgrew?
This is not gratitude for enjoyment.
This is gratitude for expansion.
It stretches the mind and teaches your brain to trust what it does not yet recognize.
Gratitude is a muscle.
Muscles grow only when they meet resistance.
This is how we shift from familiar discomfort into unfamiliar possibility — not with force, not with certainty, but with gentle, daily practice.
1:1 Future Being Coaching
If you’re ready to not just travel to places - but travel into the next version of yourself - my Future Being Coaching is for you. In this 1:1 program, we explore who you want to become, uncover the inner and outer blocks keeping you from that future, and design concrete steps so you can live it now. It’s for people who don’t want to wait for change to happen - they want to shape it.
New Podcast Episode
We look at successful people and assume they had a master plan. A perfectly drawn roadmap from day one. From the outside, it all seems so clear. Stanford → Apple → Canva → Icon. So surely Guy Kawasaki planned every step… right? In our conversation, he smiled and said the opposite. He never had a plan. He simply fell in love with what was in front of him and let curiosity carry him to the next thing and the next and the next. That’s how the future unfolded. Maybe the people we admire most aren’t following a path they’re discovering one: passion by passion. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need the courage to follow what you love. |  |
My hope is that this NEXTletter and the latest podcast episode with Guy become a spark for someone who needs one right now - someone standing at their own ridge between the familiar and the possible.
With future love,
Frederik
Gift yourself and your loved ones with future for the end of the year
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.