How your future self can help your present well-being

September 02, 2024

We’ve all had moments when we wished we could say, “Beam me up, Scotty!”

This desire to be in a better place or time is related to a psychological strategy called temporal distancing. Imagining ourselves in the future is a way to cope with the stress and anxiety of the present.

“Just because time travel takes place inside our heads doesn’t mean it can’t change reality,” said Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making and psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Anderson School of Management and author of the book “Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today.” “How you think about your future can have a huge impact on your present and future selves.”

Research shows that during the early days of the pandemic, adults who were randomly assigned to write letters to their future selves or from their future selves to their current selves experienced an immediate reduction in negative emotions and an increase in positive ones, compared with those who focused only on the present.

Another study found that using a temporal-distancing technique helped both younger and older teens regulate their emotions, easing their self-reported distress.

And in a 2022 study of 160 women residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, researchers found that people who frequently engaged in temporal distancing in response to daily stressful events over an eight-day period experienced more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions on a daily basis.

“Stress is a part of life — engaging in temporal distancing can put everyday stressors in context in our lives and help us focus on the impermanent nature of the stressor,” said Emily Willroth, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louisand co-author of the 2022 study. “This strategy also helps us challenge unhelpful or harmful thought patterns.”

By using science-based techniques for temporal distancing, you can ease your current distress and enhance your mood and motivation, experts say.

Question your emotional reactions

When you’re stuck in a traffic jam and late for a meeting or your credit card was fraudulently used, your emotions may be running high. But will this upsetting situation matter in the long run?

“We have a tendency to exaggerate how bad these things are in the moment — our brains are not good at distinguishing between things that need immediate attention, like your house is on fire, and things you’re stressed about that you can’t do anything about today,” said Mark Leary, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and author of the book “The Curse of the Self.”

Pause and consider whether this situation is likely to matter in a month, a year or 10 years. Ask yourself: “Is this going to make a difference to my overall life?” With many sources of stress, the answer is likely no.

Shifting your perspective this way “helps you detach from the emotions you’re experiencing, which makes them seem less overwhelming,” said Michele Patterson Ford, a licensed psychologist and chair of the psychology department at Dickinson College. “Taking a future perspective reduces your emotional reactivity and your cognitive reactivity, making it less likely that you’ll overthink things.”

Write a letter to your future self

If you’re feeling stuck, writing a letter to the future you about what you want for your work, school or personal life “can help you learn about your priorities and generate new ideas for how you might get there,” said Susan Krauss Whitbourne, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “It’s almost like a recipe for yourself. It gives you an arc into future hopes for yourself, which is a positive motivator.”

Then think about the steps that can help you reach that goal. Imagine future you reflecting back to today and advising you on how to get to that better place, such as taking courses to enhance your skill set, networking in your field to improve your work life, or upgrading your diet and exercise habits to enhance your health and fitness.

This mental exercise may feel like trying on different roles and seeing what suits you as you envision your future self. “It may seem artificial, but there’s real value in it, especially if it gets you out of a bad situation now,” Whitbourne said.

It can also motivate you to make better decisions now. Research by Hershfield and his colleagues found that when college students wrote letters to themselves 20 years in the future, those who felt a greater connection with their future selves exercised more in the days after the writing task.

Revisit the past

To help bolster your ability to weather the current storm, Willroth recommends diving into your past. Think about a time when your circumstances felt stressful. Then appreciate how that situation no longer affects your current life. That alone can be reassuring and help you put what’s happening into perspective.

You can also use lessons from your past. Think about specific strategies that helped you navigate that distressing period — such as talking to a trusted friend, lightening your workload or getting extra sleep — and consider employing those strategies again. “Being able to take a distance perspective can help with problem-solving,” Ford said.

Visualize how you want to be in the future

If you are struggling to find motivation to make changes, imagine how you want your future health and life to be. Maybe you want to be fit enough to actively play with your kids or grandkids. Maybe you want to save money for a special trip or retirement. The more vivid you can make this image of your future self, the more likely you are to take action on your future self’s behalf.

“Any time we’re going to make productive changes, it requires imagining a future where things are better based on those changes — that’s a motivator,” Leary said. Research has shown that when people engaged in a mental imagery practice focused on their future self twice a week for four weeks, their ability to view their future self with an empathic perspective increased, which helped them reduce procrastination.

With temporal distancing, “the big lesson you learn is that the quality of your life is so dependent on how you’re thinking,” Leary said, “and we can’t always trust our evaluation of our thoughts.”

Engaging in various forms of mental time travel lets you give your negative thoughts a reality check. And picturing yourself in a better state in the future can help you feel better right now.

Stacey Colino is a writer specializing in health and psychology. You can follow her on Twitter at @ColinoStacey.

Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.

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