I’m in a future state of mind…
A good number of us of a certain age, are thinking hard about our future and how to make the most of it post career. Developing a vision of our desired future is an important part of retirement planning but many struggle to get beyond the basics.
If you think about it, it’s sort of miraculous that we can contemplate the future and bring so much complexity to our conjurings. Just think of all the things that showed up in science fiction stories of the past that are now part of our daily lives.
However, despite all of us having this ability, most of us don’t spend a lot of time thinking beyond the immediate future and often when we do all we’re really doing is forward planning rather than being truly “future-minded” and imagining a future different than the present. As a result, envisioning a desired future for ourselves that can serve as a roadmap for our ever-lengthening lives doesn’t come easy. We just haven’t practiced enough to have developed the skill.
The good news is that considerable research has been done to help us get better at being future-minded when we need to. Here are some things to think about:
Envisioning the future is an act of the imagination that begins in the past because our raw materials are all the bits and pieces of memories and data that are stored in our brain. In some ways, we remember the future by assembling and rearranging our raw materials to form something new and yet somewhat familiar.
As much as the future can be scary because it’s unknown, it’s also full of possibility. To put your imagination to work on the possibilities, you need to give it permission to roam free. Make daydreaming a habit.* Combine it with a physical activity like walking in nature until one routinely prompts the other.
Be open-minded and curious about ideas or new experiences that come your way. Be brave. Adopt a “Yes, and…” or “Let’s try!” attitude. What you learn becomes fodder for your imagination and may point you in new directions.
Along the same lines, try out some of the things that you envision doing in the future. See how they feel physically and otherwise. This helps you integrate them more fully into your vision or throw them out completely.
Despite our wondrous ability, we’re much less able to act today for the benefit of our future selves even when we have a vision. There are many reasons for this not least that our still evolving brains favour instant gratification over potential longer-term rewards. Compounding that, our vision might not be compelling enough; we might not have faith in ourselves to achieve it; and we probably don’t have a relationship with our future selves that would motivate us to do what’s best.
You can’t do much about your brain’s bias, but you can:
Make your vision more compelling by making it vivid. Give it as much detail and color as possible. Write about it. Draw it. Talk about it. Make a vision board.
Develop a relationship with your future self. A slightly scary way to do this is to age a selfie by several years using an app like Aging Booth. This will connect you with the fact that you’re going to change as much in years to come as you did in prior years. It also builds empathy for your future self, an emotion that supports doing things today to benefit the future you.
There’s a saying that goes something like “If you can think it, you can do it.”. I’m not sure I completely buy that, but in my experience, once I get something in my head that I want to do, and I can imagine myself actually doing, I’m more likely to eventually get around to it. Your future probably won’t turn out exactly the way you envision but having some sense of direction can be comforting and might even bolster resilience when things go sideways.
* If thinking about the future makes you anxious instead of excited, put your imagination to work on what you could do in the future to help you cope with those things that make you anxious. Turn daydreaming into problem solving. You may discover possibilities that haven’t occurred to you before.