How To Get Better At Visualising Your Future Self

Now that life has returned to its pre-2020 factory settings, it's tempting to fall back into the same 'normality' many of us were so keen to escape before COVID-19 decided to park on our driveway. 

Indeed, what's been coming up in many client conversations recently, is how difficult most people find it to come up with a compelling vision for their long-term future.  

Those clients are not alone in this. For most of us, short-term concerns around physical and professional security had to take priority in the past couple of years. But there's something deeper going on here too. 

Indeed, humans are wired to focus on immediate and short-term gratification rather than their long-term prosperity. To give you an indication, a pre-pandemic US survey showed that more than fifty per cent rarely or never think about what the next ten years might look like. Less than 20 per cent only think about it occasionally. Thinking about the future also appears to decrease the older one gets. 

This article will explain why thinking about the future is so hard for our poor little brains and how to become your own personal futurist.  
 

Intuitive thinking versus prospecting

When it comes to leading rich and meaningful lives, there are three cognitive processes we need to become good at – learning from the past (hindsight), understanding the present (insight), and visualising the future (foresight).

As an online life coach, I focus mainly on the latter. My job is to help others become better at simulating an inspiring vision for the future – or indeed several visions. When asked why anyone might need a coach for that, I usually respond by asking when was the last time they came up with one of those visions themselves. I then enjoy the sound of crickets.  

Foresight is essential for decision-making, but it's not just humans who are blessed with it. Most animals with neural networks have some ability to project themselves into the future. Bees take shelter before it starts to rain. Meanwhile, your cat goes into hiding the moment the travel cage makes an appearance – probably wondering which part of its anatomy it'll come back home without this time. This is known as 'System One' thinking – or intuitive forecasting – which I discussed in a previous article on intuition. System One usually takes place subconsciously and is entirely led by emotional responses.

Alongside this type of emotional thinking, humans also have the capacity for rational reasoning. This is known as System 2 thinking or prospecting. It involves slow and deliberate thought and allows us to have a conscious argument with ourselves over what we desire to do next.

Identifying those desires is essential when it comes to planning our future.

The process of desire – motivation versus inspiration

Desire is driven by two opposite forces – a push away from pain and discomfort (motivation) and/or a pull towards the promise of something better (inspiration). 

Away from motivation is undirected and inconsistent. Imagine finding a giant spider in the bathroom sink. Your first response might be to squeal and run into another room far away from Tarantula Jolie. The moment you're out of the bathroom, you stop running. Your heart rate settles while your voice drops a few octaves again.

That spider represents motivation. With the spider gone, you can relax again. Indeed, the situation improves – a pay increase, a compliment from the nasty manager, a WhatsApp message from your avoidant lover – and before you know it, the job wasn't so bad after all; you spend another Sunday plodding over a presentation, and you're already in an Uber getting pumped up for that booty call. And that's the trouble with motivation – unless you get a consistent reminder of what you want to escape, you'll quickly lose momentum.

Inspiration acts more powerfully when it comes to taking action. You create it by dreaming up a detailed image of your future – one that's compelling enough to pull you forward.

That's because inspiration is directional and consistent. Even when you get knocked off course, you can correct by pointing at your goals again.

So, while motivation might give you the initial kick up the backside, the only way to keep your momentum is by imagining an inspiring picture of what lies ahead.
 

Why is it so hard to visualise the future?

Let's get to the heart of the problem – deciding what you want that picture of the future to look like.

In a popular Ted Talk, Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says, 'When it comes to our future self, all of us are walking around in an illusion. An illusion that history – our personal history – has just come to an end.'

In psychology, they call this the end-of-history illusion. It makes us think that right this very minute, we have become the person we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives. We'll look at who we were ten years ago with slight embarrassment and think, 'Thank god, I'm a different person!'. Yet, we find it almost impossible to believe that our future selves will do the same ten years from now. As a result, we vastly underestimate how much change we'll experience over the next ten years. 

To make things worse, studies show that when we think about our future selves, the mind does something unexpected and rather unfortunate. Whenever we imagine the future, we use a brain region called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPC), which regulates our sense of self and individuality. When we think of ourselves, the MPC lights up strongly, while when we reflect on others – say, friends or family – it powers down. Interestingly, the moment we think about total strangers, the MPC switches off completely.

Once we visualise our future selves, the MPC gets completely confused. Say you're thinking about a career move in the next two years. As you picture this, the MPC deactivates because your brain creates a disconnect between who you are today and the future self it tries to imagine. The further ahead you look, the more your mind starts acting as if it's thinking about a total stranger – one it doesn't particularly care about. That is why coming up with an inspiring long-term vision is so hard. 

This detachment from our future selves harms us and society as a whole. According to futurist and games designer Jane McGonigal: 'This glitchy brain behaviour may make it harder for us to take actions that benefit our future selves both as individuals and as a society.

McGonigal believes that the more your brain considers your future self as a stranger, the less likely it'll be to exhibit the self-control you need today. The more likely it is also that you'll make anti-social choices that'll harm your community and the wider world in the long run.

Assuming most of you aren't total sociopaths, I'm sure you'll probably agree that's not a good thing.

Three easy ways to get better at visualising your future

Being able and willing to set objectives and project yourself into the future is an essential skill if you want to live an exciting and fulfilled life.

The more you treat your future self as a total stranger, the less likely you'll resist the immediate temptations that are keeping you stuck today. 

This desire for short-term gratification is exacerbated by a phenomenon called delayed discounting, where we prefer small and immediate rewards over larger rewards we have to wait for. However, research also shows that people with a better present-day connection to their future selves can counteract this delayed discounting very well.  

Without that connection to your future self, you'll find yourself procrastinating a lot, exercising little, putting away less money for retirement, and giving up quickly in the face of the slightest temporary discomfort. As McGonigal predicted, you probably also won't care much about broader long-term challenges like climate change, racism and inequality.

Put simply, the less you're able to tap into your future self, the more of a present-day arsehole you're likely to be. 

Building a better present-day connection with your future self will help you counteract some of your present-moment impulsivity and arseholery. By painting a vivid picture of how you want a typical day to look like in five years, you're way more likely to make the decisions required today that'll get you there.

Here are three simple practices to start getting better a visualising.

1.     Prospective writing

Once a week, write for fifteen minutes uninterrupted about any new doors and opportunities that have opened, might be opening, or you'd like to have opened for you.

This process is called prospective writing. It can be extremely helpful for coming up with constructive, future-focused ideas. It will also help you build a connection with your future self because your MPC will start to treat is as a dear friend rather than a stranger.

If you're already in the habit of journaling regularly by writing down your innermost thoughts, then great. This prospective writing about the mid to long-term future may add a helpful new dimension to your practice.  

2.     Google the future

Ever heard of futurists? These people have the coolest job on the planet, getting paid to explore predictions about the future. 

You can become your own futurist by making a list of all the things you're interested in – food, sex, dog grooming, AI, alternative medicine, education, the city you live in, or your ex's whereabouts – whatever. I then encourage you to do a Google search once a week for 'the future of' at least one of the things on that list. This will give you some interesting insights into how the topics you care about right now might look in the future.

Most importantly, it'll get you into the habit of being curious about the hereafter. It'll make you a more interesting conversationalist too. 

3.     Predict the past

This is another excellent futurist technique. It involves looking back at some of the past choices you made (or didn't make). For example, it could be a particular turning point in your life or even a small decision you took earlier today. Now visualise the impact if you'd have made a different choice instead.

This exercise is a great reminder that you have free will and that the future isn't inevitable. Just like it wasn't inevitable that you ended up on my website reading the very words I wrote here. 

It also acts as a useful prompt that – just as you made choices yesterday which decided how this present moment looks – you're about to make decisions today that could radically shape your future.  

Conclusion: train your inner clairvoyant

Our brains weren't necessarily wired for long-term future thinking, but it's a skill you can practise.

To become the best version of yourself ten years from now, you need to get good at personal prospecting and come up with a compelling vision for your future. Having this vision offers no guarantee that it'll happen, but at least it'll keep you moving forward when the going gets tough.