Mental time travel is a great decision-making tool — this is how to use it

There are three major kinds of sense-making that happen when you engage in mental time travel to your future:

•  First, your brain has to do what cognitive scientists call “scene construction” — mentally building the future world. 
• After scene construction, your brain starts to do what cognitive scientists call “opportunity detection.” Here, you look for ways to fulfil your needs and achieve your goals.
• Finally, as your brain works to transport you to the future, feelings will kick in.

You’ve never been 10 years older than you are now, so your brain doesn’t know what to expect if you try to imagine. Plus, there’s so much opportunity for things to change in a decade — your body, relationships, life circumstances, physical environment.

Your brain intuitively grasps this unknowability, so instead of confidently projecting one possibility, it opens up a blank space for you to consider multiple possibilities. You have to start making intentional choices about what you want to imagine in your future — you have to fill in the blanks.

Crucially, these are real feelings. Studies show that the emotions you experience during EFT can be just as psychologically powerful as emotions experienced in the present. This is one reason why many of us prefer to imagine best-case-scenario futures and avoid imagining the futures that scare us.

But there are real benefits to intentionally and carefully imagining futures that frighten you. This can help you do the important work of getting ready for anything — even things you’d rather not think about, let alone actually experience, someday.