How you think about your future is bound up with your well-being. Positive future thinking (PFT) is an important component of healthy cognitive functioning. When people can’t imagine a positive future, that negative view often becomes a central feature of anxiety and depression.
Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology focused on the positive events and influences you’ve experienced in life. By focusing on the positives, people can find a life of meaning and purpose. The goal to achieve is that: you don’t just survive, you thrive.
Using what’s called prospection, you can think about and stimulate your possible future. This may include predicting, planning, and using hypothetical scenarios about future events. Seeing if you can find a way to set your mind on being optimistic and an abundant future despite the struggles you face can prove beneficial.1
How Future Thinking Helps You
There are a host of mental health benefits from allowing your imagination to play a part in future thinking—from harnessing motivation to achieving your long-term goals.
Motivation and Expectation
When you are motivated to do something and have the expectation something will happen in the future, you are more likely to succeed.
Note that, future thinking is a lot different from fantasizing. With fantasizing, people might feel happy as if they have already met their goals in that moment, so they don’t work or strategize for their future success.
With future thinking, people come to expect to reach a goal. So, they often plan, make efforts, and work around obstacles to achieve it.
Visualization
When you hold a picture in your mind and energize it, you are visualizing. Decades of studies have shown that athletes who rehearse by mentally visualizing and imagining successful performances in the future do perform better.
Remarkably, you are stimulating the same part of the brain as you do when you actually play the sport. Using visualization techniques can empower you to a better future.
Delay Discounting
Delay discounting is a psychological term that describes how people usually choose the smaller awards that they can obtain sooner over large long-term rewards, thus discounting the delay. For example, you might choose to spend your money on a new tech device now, rather than saving it for a larger goal, such as your retirement fund.
When you imagine a future retirement in which you are traveling and excited, however, you connect more to that future version of yourself. It can become more real and possible. You’ll therefore be more likely to invest into that future retirement plan and overcome delay discounting.
Managing Mental Health Challenges
Creating the habit of future thinking with a positive outlook has multiple advantages to it. In addition, it can help you with the effects of various mental health challenges.
Reduce Stress
It might be hard nowadays to find anyone who isn’t dealing with stress in some way. Haley Neidich, LCSW, a mental health professional, says, “Individuals who naturally have vivid imaginations and are optimistic tend to have better skills in dealing with life’s stressors and triggering events.” She says when people are in a positive future thinking mode, their body is more relaxed. Therefore, a stressor simply will not consider it as a massive issue.
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Anxiety
“Interestingly,” Neidich comments, “I also find that successful individuals who have anxiety disorders and are naturally “future thinkers” tend to credit their anxiety for their reason to success. This can be problematic as this reinforces the idea that it’s the anxiety and not a thought habit that brought on their success.
Depression
The power of future thinking can be a important component of mental health treatment. Neidich says that those with depression improve significantly in depressive symptomatology when they focus on positive future goals.
She also says, “A new way of thinking changes our thoughts. Being excited or imagining a positive, successful future allows feel good hormones to be secreted and triggers an actual chemical experience of decreased depression.”
How to Use Future Thinking
With all the benefits of using your imagination for future thinking, you might be wondering how to practice it. There are multiple ways to do so; you can find the best way that works for you, and even experiment with new ways of trying future thinking.
Anticipatory Savoring
To improve your psychological health, luxuriate in thinking about a future event. Anticipatory savouring is when you are enjoying an event that hasn’t happened. You benefit in many ways: by imagining it, by finally experiencing it, and then by remembering it.
Practice
Take an inventory. See if you’re obsessing about the past or mired in your current problems. turn to thoughts about what you’re looking forward to. Give attention to positive future ideas.
Future Directed Therapy
If you are still struggling, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you think about the future and improve on prospection. This form of therapy changes on your automatic negative response and helps you replace that negative thinking with a more objective, clear-eyed way of thinking. This can help you move forward with your future in a healthy manner.
Or you might opt directly for Future Directed Therapy. In this form of therapy, you don’t dwell on the past or your present-day problems. Rather, you spend time imagining what you desire in the future and learn how to meet those future goals.
Moving Forward
With the power of your imagination to help you live a healthy life.
The benefits to having a positive belief system and expectations abound tapping into our imagination can increase feelings of self-esteem and confidence, that lead to more positive choices in life, and help you thrive into healthier relationships. So, turn on your future channel and find happy, positive scenarios to imagine.
