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Key points
- Turning our thoughts to our future self can help us feel good today.
- Prospection can help us identify what we want to try and experience next.
- Contrast your visions of the future with the the barriers you will face on your way to the goal.
Years ago, my teenage self asked the Magic 8 Ball if I would marry Corey.
"Without a doubt" appeared from its watery depths. Corey didn't.
I married Jerry. Thank goodness.
The future is unknown, but what I am certain of is that whatever comes, I can impact it.
No Resolutions This Year
No resolutions for me this year. No word-of-the-year. This year, I'm taking a more playful approach and prospecting for my future.
What does this even mean?
Our ability to envision our future selves and circumstances can certainly freak us out if we use our imaginations to contemplate the next big bill or test results.
But when we focus on what we want to become and experience, thinking about our future selves can also lead to more positive outcomes. In one study, psychologist Hal Ersner-Hershfield found that those who more closely identified their future selves save more money in the long run.
The more connected we feel to our future selves, the better present-day decisions we make, leading to greater rewards in the long run.
Prospection
Psychologists call this practice of future thinking prospection. Just like the word defined by Webster’s to mean the “activity of searching for valuable natural resources, such as gold or oil” prospecting about our future has us looking and dreaming about our own valuable resources, skills, desires, and goals and imagining who we are and will become.
This kind of forward-thinking improves our mental health and well-being, adds meaning to our lives, and can boost our optimism—right now.
How Do We Get There
Create a Vision Board. Select images that represent the things you want to become and achieve and stick them on a poster board or bulletin where you can look at them every day. Then play with this. Write down what the images represent. Set goals from the outcomes you've posted to move toward the depicted future.
Make a Things-to-Look-Forward-to-List. Each day, make a list of something you are looking forward to in the following day and the year ahead. Challenge yourself to find new things to imagine. This practice can also boost optimism and create a positive expectation, which helps improve our mental health and increase motivation.
Imagine your perfect day. Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? And how do you feel during this ideal day? Choosing specific details and focusing on the good feelings you will have during this perfect day will help your brain visualize reality.
Professional athletes, Olympians, and even astronauts have used visualization to improve performance. Imagine the future reality and prime your brain to make it happen.
Create a mental image of your best possible self. Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? What are your values? What is important to you then? How do you spend your time? Create a story around this future self and then look at where you are right now. Draft some thoughts or goals about how to move from the present day to this envisioned future self.
Whether you try these or other practices to envision your future self, have fun with this kind of prospection. Envision the positive outcomes. Play with the possibilities. Allow yourself to consider new avenues or to attempt the things you've always wanted to try in your imagination.
These practices can help us develop new goals or plans and get excited about what comes next. Remember, too, that we change dramatically over even a few years, much more than we anticipate, according to research. If we are going to change anyhow, how fun would it be to move in the direction we want?
Present Perks
Fantasizing about the future and creating a vision of how I want to live feels refreshing, light, and fun.
The process creates anticipatory joy. For example, if you are dreaming up the big vacation you will take next year, thinking about it now makes you happy, and that is shown to increase your enjoyment of it when you finally take the trip.
A positive future focus can also help manage symptoms of depression by reminding us that we are malleable and that our circumstances can change for the better. A pessimistic future focus may contribute to depression, so leading with the positive is key here.
Don't Get Stuck in the Fantasy
While prospection and envisioning positive future outcomes can motivate us to lose weight, finish the book, build the business, or make progress toward our goals, it's only as effective as the action we take.
I love thinking about the novel I’m writing, and how it’s going to look on the shelves when it’s done and published a lot more than I like writing it right now. Still, to make my future life become my current space, I’ve got to do the work.
Thinking about the end goal can get us excited and solidify our vision. Still, to achieve it, we must contrast that vision with a clear-eyed look at the obstacles in our path, according to research by Gabriele Oettingen.
Contrasting the happy-ever-after outcome with the barriers we’ll encounter along the way builds motivation, and makes us more likely to achieve our goals.
