The 500-Year Exercise

Imagining scenarios far into the future can alleviate the feeling that you’re not being productive or successful enough today

Advocating to look to the future to alleviate the stress and anxiety of the moment has been around for a while.

One example is temporal distancing, a self-distancing strategy in which we view a negative experience from a future time perspective to get a more calm and grounded reality check when something is wrong in our life.

Self-reflection about how we’ll feel in that future time about a current stressor reduces associated negative feelings. The more we do this, the better our mental health outcomes too. Looking to the future in this way is a helpful life skill.

Then there’s the process known as prospection. Looking to the future this way can help us make better decisions, motivate us to accomplish, improve our overall wellbeing, and make us more kind and generous.

Indeed, the advice to look to the future as a means of placing the present moment in better perspective and feeling better about our current state is a well-known strategy.

Here’s what Caitlin Harper wrote in “Five Tips to Help You Put Things in Perspective”.

You might think in a day or a week that you’ll still be stressed, and that’s okay. But as you picture yourself…