A Fresh Way of Looking to the Future With Renewed Optimism

Combine future journaling and mental rehearsal to envisage your distant and immediate successes.

Photo by Jennifer Griffin on Unsplash

When a year enters its final stage, there is usually a sigh of relief. Relaxation is nigh, and you can put your feet up. However, this is no ordinary year. As I won’t see a vaccine for a good while, it isn’t easy to positively anticipate the coming year.

Here in the UK, restrictions are still in place, and they will be for some time. As we have jumped from lockdowns to tiered systems, the fluctuation of our ability to live normally makes it difficult to look beyond the coming weeks. Goals have become challenging to envisage, and life stutters from one problem to the next. There is, however, a solution.

Journal about your future successes

The problem with negative anticipation is, especially now, our minds are almost exclusively in a doom and gloom mindset. That makes it challenging to see into the future and imagine any form of goal achievement. However, instead of peering over your fence, Matt Hunckler, CEO of Verge, suggests grabbing a pair of binoculars and looking into the next village. Specifically, Hunckler uses ‘future journalling,’ where you imagine you’re writing a journal entry…