This week’s Thrive In Five is About the concept of Future Retrospection and dreaming of the future
The next stop in the series, we’re running in March is on how to positively change your physiology and your happiness levels is all about dreaming. When I say dreaming, I don’t mean falling asleep and having rapid eye movement, and often having very strange and bizarre dreams. But I’m talking about dreaming for the future.
Dreaming for the future
We are coming to the end of lockdown – we hope for good this time. Re-integration into the normality of life again or so we hope. And I think it’s really good for us to dream. It’s really good for us to plan for the future. What do I want life to be looking like a six months time? Do I have a holiday booked to look forward to? Do I have friends that I’m looking forward to seeing.
What are you dreaming of in the next few months?
These dreams don’t need to be big, hairy, audacious goals. It could just be something relatively simple, that we would have laughed about if you called it a dream two years ago, like meeting up with friends for Sunday lunch in the pub. I think it’s important to have those things in the diary. We know that it has a positive effect on our mental health and our wellbeing as well.
The concept of future retrospection
When you make a plan into the future, you can then engage in what’s called future retrospection or futurespective thinking. Future retrospection is making a big goal into the future. And then working back reverse engineering as to how are you going to make that happen.
Studies have shown that we get a positive effect on our wellbeing when we engage in that kind of future retrospection. So dreaming of the future, even if you’re not feeling very optimistic at the moment, is important for your wellbeing. Getting something in the diary that you can look forward to.
Don’t tie yourself to it. So you’re completely dependent upon it happening because there’s still a lot of uncertainty, but have it there in the diary so that you can look forward to it. Work backwards what needs to happen to make that thing happen.
So happy dreaming, get futurespective in making plans. Look out for the next in the series. And of course all the very best for now stay healthy.
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