Future Me Starts Today

See Yourself in the Future

Do you have future goals as an educator? Do you see yourself becoming an educational leader? Are you interested in tracking students beyond graduation? Will you use your expertise to write a book? Will you speak to the masses? Mentor others? Run workshops? Open your own school? Would you like to change educational policies? What are you going to do toward your educational goals? You can do this, you know. You are your future self.

The Book!

The Science I Explored

According to cognitive psychologist Endel Tulving, PhD, the ability to envision specific future scenarios (called episodic future thought) may be closely related to the ability to recollect specific episodes from our past (that is, episodic memory). Indeed, evidence from neuropsychology, clinical psychology, and developmental psychology indicates that people who cannot remember specific details from their past also appear to be impaired in their ability to mentally envision personal future experiences.

One salient difference between past and future thought is that recollecting a personal memory requires reconstructing, as a whole, an event that has already taken place, but imagining a future event requires actively and continuously constructing a new scenario. The event has not yet taken place, so it is up to the individual to decide on a moment-to-moment basis where the event is taking place, who is there, and what they are doing.[1] 

In their recent study, the Stanford researchers found that the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex work in tandem in ways that allow humans to plan and navigate a route from one location to another. Goal-oriented navigation is a complex process that requires creating a mental game plan for reaching the future places you intend to go. …This research was led by Thackery Brown, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stanford University. In a statement on his website, Brown describes his research by saying, “My research focuses on the flexible representation of memories and expression of behaviors in humans. Combining neuroimaging and virtual reality, my studies ask how we are able to remember the distinct events that happen in our lives, and what mechanisms our brain employs to draw on the past in order to make decisions about the present and plan for the future.”

For his latest study, Brown and colleagues immersed human study participants into a virtual-reality environment in which they had to navigate through five different locations to a destination. The following day, the participants were required to navigate the same locations and find their targeted destinations. …Network-level interactions of the hippocampus with the prefrontal cortex allowed for flexible representations of planned destinations. The hippocampus was also able to keep track of the route towards the “future goal,” or targeted destination, during navigation.

Three other brain regions—the parahippocampal cortex, perirhinal cortex, and retrosplenial complex—were found to help the brain “visualize” future spatial contexts for navigation.[2] 

A Situation

The educator has been engrossed in teaching for the past five years. This educator loves learning, growing, and creating wonderful learning environments for the children. But the educator is beginning to wonder about reaching more children, exploring personal talents, or having a larger impact with their ideas on education. The educator wonders if those things are possible while on this career path.

Imagining Your Future

Imagining your future is about how the brain can keep track of your imagination in order to move you toward your future goal. So, let’s get that journal out and write a short paragraph explaining how you got to where you are today. Be sure to include people who opened doors for you as well.

Now that that’s done, on the next page make three columns: “Things I see myself doing in my future,” “A possible first step,” and “What does it look like to me?” Begin filling in the columns with ideas about your future. You will always take actions and astonishingly, someone will appear, seemingly out of thin air, and open a door or give valuable advice. Revisit and recreate this list as you see fit. Enjoy the process. Have fun with your imagination. Be as grand as you desire. And keep it to yourself so you won’t have to defend your imagination to anyone (which sometimes makes you start to doubt it yourself).

Most of the time, people know the possible first steps. But if a possible first step is unknown, then research is easy and usually at your fingertips these days! This is the beginning of a mental game plan, and your brain is helping you. Listen and pay attention because valuable advice and unexpected opportunities will show up as long as you keep taking steps. Follow your intuition like the yellow brick road.

Can you see yourself sitting with your journal on a comfortable seat, with your favorite beverage, your pencil flowing across the page, deciding on your future? Say it with me: “My own imagination helps me shape my future.”

Quotes

Imagining the future may be more important than analyzing the past.

—CK Prahalad

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

—Carl Sagan

[1] Karl K. Szpunar and Kathleen B. McDermott PhD, “Remembering the Past to Imagine the Future,” Dana Foundation, Updated February 15, 2007, https://www.dana.org/article/remembering-the-past-to-imagine-the-future/.

[2] Christopher Bergland, “The Neuroscience of Planning and Navigating Your Daily Life,” Psychology Today, Updated June 12, 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201606/the-neuroscience-planning-and-navigating-your-daily-life.