Future thinking, is it worrying or something else?
Disengage from worrying and engage with productivity, vision and real problem solving.
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash
Hello everyone,
I listened to a podcast yesterday from the BBC Radio 4. The series is called “All in the Mind” and this particular episode is called ‘Future Thinking’. Click here to listen to the episode.
As a therapist who specialises in treating anxiety I was immediately interested, as all worry is future based. I was interested to see what they had to say about future thinking and the relationship to worrying. Interestingly, worrying was not mentioned.
Their primary school panel was totally enchanting. The comment of a young person about how when they are 60, they will be in huge pain really tickled me. I will make sure to enjoy my remaining months of being pain free 🤣
The podcast episode talked about how we use the same part of our brains to think about the future as we do to recall the past. Neuro-science is just fascinating!
Of course anxiety is very complicated. In essence worry is about looking into the future and thinking about all the worst things that could happen. It is often rooted in the attempt to create certainty. It causes immense distress.
Future thinking is a process that involves imagining, envisioning, and projecting potential future possibilities, recognising that the future is uncertain and multifaceted.
Being able to sit with uncertainty is a skill in itself.
Some of the outcomes of future thinking are:
Enhanced Decision-Making: By considering potential futures, organisations and individuals can make more informed decisions that are resilient to change.
Innovation: Future thinking can spark creativity and lead to the development of innovative solutions and products.
Improved Planning: It helps in developing long-term strategies and plans that are adaptable to changing circumstances.
Resilience: By anticipating potential disruptions and challenges, organisations and individuals can build resilience and adapt more effectively to future uncertainties.
Design: Helps in creating designs that are adaptable and sustainable in the face of future changes.
Business Strategy: Used to develop long-term plans and identify opportunities in a dynamic market.
Product Development: Helps in envisioning future customer needs and developing innovative products and services.
Policy Making: Used to anticipate the impacts of policies and develop strategies for addressing future challenges.
Over the years I have noticed how my anxious clients will get into ‘what if this happens (a terrible hypothetical narrative), then I could do x, y and z’. It can feel to them like they are engaging in a type of problem solving. Worrying has no positive outcomes. It does not ‘solve’ anything.
You cannot problem solve something that has not yet happened.
It is an interesting idea isn’t it? You could argue that is exactly what we are doing with future thinking.
Future thinking is a process that creates hope, innovation, resilience, problem solving and many other things that lead to positive outcomes. There is a big difference.
I think there is a fine line between future thinking and worrying. That is why I wrote briefly about this today. Awareness of the difference between engaging in thoughts that are real planning and strategy versus drifting into worry can really help us day to day. We can help ourselves move from distressing and unproductive to worry into productivity.
It makes me think about my current replanning of my life. We are moving 800 miles back to England this year, all being well. There is a lot of strategy thinking about that, I can tell you! Clearly to me, that is future thinking. The executing of a plan where there are a million things that could present to us as challenges. We have tried to mitigate for some of them. Some things will happen that we will not expect of course, and that is the sitting with uncertainty part.
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I have had to wind down my face to face practice, I am only staying with online clients whilst we go through this moving chaos as we are moving so far away. I had to do a lot of future thinking based decision making about that. For example, my face to face clients do not want online therapy. That is totally fine and I have to consider their welfare. So I am creating enough time to be able to naturally end therapy with those face to face clients. As I will be away from home for chunks of time house hunting I can see online clients from wherever I am and their therapy will not be interrupted. It would not be fair to take on any new clients who want face to face work at this point.
Then there is our new creative business. I will put a section into this publication so you can see how we progress with this. To start a business from scratch, requires a lot of different types of future thinking!!
Can you reflect if you are worrying and engaging with your self critic or engaging with productive future thinking?
Read more about your self-critic from my previous article
Jane
Accredited Cognitive Psychotherapist
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT), Mindfulness & Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
➡️If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis you can contact me at: mail@janewatkinscbt.co.uk
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You may find a previous article I wrote about the self-critic helpful to read alongside this one. Our self-critic can make us worry and feel really anxious
