Creating Your Future Stories

The consensus among researchers (for example, Joseph LeDoux and Daniel Kahneman) is that the human brain strives to organize experience and memories into coherent stories. These “stories” help guide thoughts, feelings, and behavior on autopilot, even in our dreams. We’re typically not consciously aware of our constructed stories or their effects on our lives. Yet they are part of the lens through which we see ourselves and the world.

The stories, of course, are based on memories and interpretations of experience, with subjective meanings and biases. While we cannot change the past, we can change the meaning we give to it. For instance, past abuse can mean that I’m hopeless or resilient, that I asked for it, or my abuser had moral lapses and monumental deficits in impulse control.

It’s generally beneficial to bring these tacit narratives into the open to “tell your story.” With deliberation, you can decide which interpretations and meanings are most advantageous to you.

Telling Your Future Story

There is a greater benefit in telling your future story about the life you want to have and the memories you want to create. Future stories are more empowering because we can change our future, while dwelling on past experiences can make us feel powerless. The reason for this is more fundamental than the obvious fact that we can’t change the past. The primary function of emotions is to prepare us for action. (The Latin root of the word means to move out.) Emotions send action signals to the organs and muscle groups of the body, as neuroscientist Candace Pert elucidated and presented to popular audiences in her book, Molecules of Emotion. Preparing behavior works in the present and future, but not at all when focused on the past.

Similarly, when thinking about the future, focus on proactive behavior, not how you might feel. It’s almost impossible to project feelings into the future, much less to imagine constructive behavior motivated by how you might feel. Feelings change with changes in perceptions and behavior. Focus on imagined feelings projected into the future is more likely to inhibit beneficial behavior.

If you consistently act on your deeper, most humane emotions and reduce the activation of habituated coping mechanisms, the future will be better.

Your Core Values

Try the following exercises:

1. List what you consider to be the three most important qualities about you as a person (e.g., passionate, optimistic, compassionate, loyal, industrious).

2. List three things you “stand for,” that is, things that are important to you and worthy of your time, energy, and sacrifice (e.g., fairness, hard work, integrity, respectful behavior, caring relationships).

3. List five things you will appreciate about your future life (e.g., caring people in your life, having material needs met, good friends, education, wisdom, success, peacefulness, excitement).

4. Describe your automatic coping with problems or discomfort (e.g., blame, deny responsibility, avoid/distract, improve, appreciate, connect, protect).

Use the items you listed above to construct your future story.

(Example: “I’m passionate, optimistic, compassionate, loyal, fair, a hard worker, of high integrity. I appreciate the caring people in my life, my material security, my good friends, and my education. Though tempted to blame, deny, or avoid, I strive to improve, appreciate, connect, protect.”)

Read your story several times a day for about six weeks to recondition your autopilot brain. After six weeks, you should notice positive changes in attitudes and behavior, as well as in people’s reactions to you.