Do you have a vision of the future life you want? A real, crystal clear vision? How often do you think about it? Embellish it? Fine-tune it?
Describing our best future selves can be affirming and can help us actualise our dreams. So let’s focus on that. A simple way to achieve this is to write down characteristics that describe our best future selves, daily, in the present tense. For example, whether or not they are true, you could write:
- I love myself as much as I love my children
- I travel to a new foreign country every year
- I’m financially secure
- I work because I want to but can retire whenever I choose
Writing a few statements like this every day, that help us concretely articulate the qualities of our desired life, can help us to reach our goals.
Some are sceptical about the strength of positive thinking. They don’t want to accept that we can influence our own happiness. But the science backs this up. Physicists have even proven that the thoughts of physicists conducting experiments can influence the outcome of those experiments. So, let’s stop arguing. Let’s accept that we can channel positivity into our lives. Let’s invest the energy we could spend trying to disprove these notions in a more productive way.
Let’s write words, but let’s also collect pictures, photos, inspiring quotes, and symbols. Anything that helps us not only verbalise our future but visualise it too. Let’s collect all those things and let’s create our own beautiful, inspiring, complex, and fascinating vision boards. It’s a bit flashback to the 1980s when these were first pretty hip. But the idea still works.
As our description of our desired future begins to be better articulated through our words, and as our image for the future is more easily visualised through our boards, we begin to develop a much more powerful impression of the future life we want to live. And this impression can become a source of data to help inform our hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or once-in-a-lifetime decisions.
We all know how it feels when we have a tough choice to make. We find ourselves lying awake, dwelling on it for hours. Should I? Or shouldn’t I?
As we describe our future life in words, pictures, and all other forms of inspiration, some of those decisions may become a bit easier to make. Because all we have to do is ask ourselves one question. If I do this, does it take me closer to my future vision? Or does it take me further away?
For example:
- If we desire financial security but are contemplating a large, frivolous purchase.
- How about if we desire to be fit and healthy – but we’re being offered cheesecake?
- What about if we’re committed to loving ourselves as much as we love others – yet are debating whether or not to prioritise self-care?
- Perhaps one of our most important decisions can be whether to stay in a relationship or not. Does your partner honour your vision of your future? Does he or she support you moving towards it? Or do you tend to drift further away from your own personal goals, based on his or her priorities?
So maybe let’s try to dial back the agonising. We truly do hold much of our future in our own hands. Let’s get bold, clear and ambitious with our visions. Then, let’s get bossy, disciplined and committed. Let’s keep our promises to ourselves. Act the way that will help us achieve our visions. Own that we are the single most powerful force in our own lives and make amazing things happen.
Today could be the first day of the most incredible, challenging, inspiring, exciting journey towards your future destiny. What do you want your future to hold? Name it and claim it.
Joan Senio is a mental health blogger who runs My Best Friend Adeline. She is a wife, mother, sister, daughter, godmother, and aunt.
