Your mentality about the future has a direct impact on how you feel. Healthy cognitive functioning includes the practice of positive future thinking (PFT). Anxiety and depression are frequently characterized by a gloomy outlook on the future, which occurs when people cannot see a happy lot.
Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology focused on positive events and influences in life. People discover life with meaning and purpose by concentrating on the good. The objective is to flourish rather than merely endure.
Prospection is the process of thinking about and stimulating your potential future. This might entail creating hypothetical situations, planning, forecasting, and predicting future occurrences. It is helpful to find a method to focus your thoughts on positivity and a prosperous future despite the difficulties you face.
How Future Thinking Helps You
Using your imagination to take part in future thinking has a variety of positive effects on your mental health, from increasing motivation to attaining long-term objectives.
— Motivation and Expectation
You are more likely to succeed when you are driven to take action and believe that something positive will transpire in the future.
Remember that planning for the future differs from daydreaming. Those who fantasize may feel wonderful and as though they have already achieved their objectives, which prevents them from working or planning for future achievements.
— Delay Discounting
A psychological concept known as “delay discounting” outlines how people frequently choose shorter-term incentives over long-term ones, therefore discounting the wait. You could spend your money on a new technological advancement rather than setting it aside for a longer-term objective like your retirement fund.
But, you feel more connected to that future version of yourself when you picture a traveling and exciting retirement. It gets more probable and natural. As a result, you’ll be more inclined to invest for that retirement and avoid delay discounting.
— Visualisation
You visualize when you keep a picture in your head and give it energy. According to decades’ worth of research, athletes who mentally practice by envisioning and anticipating excellent performances in the future actually perform better.
Surprisingly, you activate the same brain region active when you perform the sport. By using visualization methods, you may take control of your destiny.
Handling Issues with Mental Health
Positivity in future thinking is a habit that has numerous benefits. Also, it helps you in coping with the impacts of many mental health issues.
— Reduce Stress
It might be hard nowadays to find anyone who is relaxed in some way. Individuals who naturally have vivid imaginations and are optimistic tend to have better skills in managing stressors and dealing with triggering events. When people are in the positive future-thinking mode, their body is relaxed. Therefore a stressor will not register as a massive issue.
— Anxiety
Successful individuals with anxiety disorders who are naturally “future thinkers” tend to credit their anxiety for their success. This can be problematic as this reinforces that it’s the anxiety and not a thought habit that brings them success.
— Depression
The power of future thinking can be a critical component of mental health treatment. Those with depression improve significantly in depressive symptomatology when focusing on positive future goals.
A new way of thinking changes our thoughts. Being excited or imagining a positive, successful future enables feel-good hormones to be secreted and triggers an actual chemical experience of decreased depression.
Using Future Thinking
Given all of its advantages, you might wonder how to utilize your imagination for future thinking practice. There are several methods to do this; you may choose the one that works best for you or even test out different approaches to future thinking.
— Anticipatory Savoring
Allow yourself to indulge in future-focused thought to enhance your psychological well-being. When you appreciate a future event, you are engaging in anticipatory savoring. You gain by visualizing it, ultimately experiencing it, and then remembering it in various ways.
— Practice
Count things up. Check to see if you are fixated on the past or bogged down by your present issues. Switch your attention to your following plans. Pay attention to forward-looking, uplifting concepts.
— Future Directed Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can assist you in thinking about the future and enhancing prospection if you are still having trouble. This treatment alters your innate negative response and enables you to feel more objectively and clearly in a place of negative thoughts. This can assist you in making a good transition into the future.
Or you might choose Future Directed Treatment outright. You don’t focus on your past or current issues during this treatment. Instead, you take the time to think about your future objectives and figure out how to achieve them.
Moving Forward
Use the power of your imagination to help you live a healthy life. When we imagine, we use parts of our brain to counter negative narratives, fear, and hopelessness.
Benefits to having positive beliefs and expectations abound. It takes the same amount of time to write a negative story which can bring your mood down. These positive beliefs and dreams affect our mental well-being and can improve sleep and intimacy with those around us.
Tapping into our imagination can increase our self-esteem and confidence, lead to more positive choices, and help us thrive in healthier relationships. So, turn on your future channel and find happy, optimistic scenarios to imagine.
This article was co-written with a therapist from Sensera — a self-help app that provides daily CBT audio sessions and exercises. The app helps people deal with a variety of mental issues (anxiety, low self-esteem, and relationship problems). Download now to become happier!
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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The post How to Use the Power of Future Thinking to Achieve a Healthy Lifestyle appeared first on The Good Men Project.
