FutureVision: Could Imagination Have Both a Practical and a Mystical Dimension?

Do our imaginations actually do some of the work of “fabricating” what we wish to make manifest?

There’s an expression I used to hear a lot as a kid: “Think good and it’ll be good.” I always thought of it as a platitude, some saying meant to give a little hope to a depressed person. Now I see how true it really is. Envisioning something in its complete form even before you begin working on it is how every piece of music, every ballet, every relationship, and every business begins. It is also a means of bringing a nebulous hope into a practical reality. This ability to see the as-yet-created is what I call FutureVision. This is how you can use your imagination to create, not only a clear vision of the future you hope for but also to bring that vision to life. 

To “conjure” up that vision, you should include the smallest physical and emotional details: the sounds, the sights, and the feelings engendered by the imagined experience. In this essay, we’ll read a couple of stories that show how seeing yourself accomplishing your desired goal can play a significant role in producing positive outcomes. We’ll also learn some ways to improve and accelerate our own FutureVision.

One summer, when I was seventeen, my ability to see was so powerful, that it propelled me to a new level of musical and personal engagement.

It was 1977 and I was in Minneapolis. The air was thick as pond water, with an eerie green-sky stillness that signified an impending tornado. The calypso band Shangoya was playing. Somewhere between the bone-crushing bass notes and the rhythmic clang of time being beaten out on a rusty brake shoe, I was having an epiphany.

I pictured myself floating outside my body, hovering over the band shell, and then I was watching myself on that stage, imagining that I was winding out on my guitar. After the show, I gave my phone number to the bass player.

“Your band is good,” I said, “but you’d be a lot better with me.”

Six months later, I got a call. “Shangoya is lookin’ for a new guitarist.”

The following evening I stood alongside at least a dozen other players waiting to audition, older guys with years of experience and the best equipment. And there I was with this dinky amplifier I’d bought with my bar mitzvah money. Suddenly it was my turn.

“Can you play reggae, mon?” they asked.

I thought back to that image of myself on that stage the night of the tornado watch. I felt like a damn tornado myself. “Hell yeah,” I said.

The band started a slow minor-key groove. It was the perfect couch to lay down my raw bluesy riffs. When the music finally stopped, the band’s leader, Aldrich Peter Nelson, a lanky Trinidadian with a shaved head and skin the color of molasses, turned to me and said, “What ya tink you can bring to de band if we hire you all jus’ now?”

“You see that little amplifier?” I said. “When I’m onstage with you guys—and I will be onstage with you guys—it’s gonna shoot flames.”

The whole band started laughing at me. I don’t blame them. They couldn’t help themselves. But in the end, I was the one who got the gig. In preparing for the audition with Shangoya — I saw the end I desired from the start. (Apropos of this, biblical scholars report that another —MUCH larger— act of creation was accomplished in the very same manner: The creation, and constant recreation, of the entire universe!)

Speech and Vision

Image: youtube.com

In rare cases, certain individuals pursue and realize their goals as though wearing blinders to all forms of distraction. Their highly detailed FutureVision is so strong that there is almost no interference at all. Sure, they fear criticism, sweat over the outcomes, and harbor some doubts, just like the rest of us. But since they can see themselves succeeding so vividly in their mind’s eye, they’re less susceptible to the protestations of their internal critics. They also know that immediately getting engaged in the small, specific steps of what they see in their FutureVision is a most powerful tool in achieving dreams.

My oldest son, Isaac, is that kind of person—at least, he acted like one in his pursuit to become the commencement speaker of his graduating class at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His speech was chosen out of a hundred submissions—a huge deal for anyone, but what I recall and why I mention it here is that, at least from a distance, he’d seemed so unafraid and casual about the whole process. When I asked him to think back on what had driven him to write the speech, he told me that it had happened almost at the last minute.

He’d received an e-mail announcement reminding students of the due date, and he’d remembered a senior friend of his from sophomore year submitting a speech; Isaac had thought how cool it was that just anyone could try. He’d always considered that delivering the commencement address was something he might like to do, and somehow the e-mail and the due date just made the idea tangible. But the key was what he told me he did next:

“I remember it was a Friday and it was raining, and I went to this coffee shop, and I brought some books with me. Anytime I write I always bring books with me, just random books. I like to have words around, especially when I’m writing. It’s almost as though the book is a marker saying, ‘This is what I’m doing; this is my vision. I’m going to go write and here are some books to prove it.’ I watched a handful of speeches online to see what people do. I saw a really good one and it made me think, ‘Okay, I’m just gonna start writing it and I’ll write it like one of these good ones.’

The good ones start off informally. I liked this one where the speaker was sort of self-conscious about giving a commencement speech. I thought it’d be cool to start talking about how I’m about to give a commencement speech, so could we, you know, just get that out of the way. And then I started writing. It was as simple as that. Once I put one word down, it all sort of came out.”

Of course, I’m aware that most people don’t have the ability to sit down and write without stalling or getting stuck, and I wondered how it just “came out.” “Well,” Isaac continued, “it’s the way I always write any essay. I just write. I think a lot of people approach writing like it’s some scary thing. They make the mistake of thinking that you need to slowly construct every sentence individually. At the start, you’re just doing stream-of-consciousness writing, like the way you talk. I always write and read out loud to myself as I’m writing, quietly. It just kind of comes out. I know I can always edit and redact later, and that kind of frees me up, I guess. When I finished, I took it and I read it to people. I always do that too.”

I wondered whether he had told anyone what he was going to do (as he’d mentioned it to me in passing, over the phone one day). And if so, whom else had he told and why? Isaac explained it like this: “I told a lot of people. If you don’t tell anyone the stakes are too low. Low stakes mean low pressure. Low pressure often means something won’t ever get done.”

What Isaac did was something we’ve touched on already. You might think putting extra pressure on yourself by telling people your intention is counterproductive, but as we’ve seen, it has the effect of making a goal more real. As Isaac put it: “If you never say what you’re about to do—literally say it out loud—it doesn’t really exist.” Just as we saw with the Smartphone Letter BBO, what you think or feel is an act of creation but it doesn’t become manifest until you literally or metaphorically hit Send!

It’s not that Isaac didn’t doubt himself or have second thoughts throughout the process; he confided that he did. It’s what he did that kept the doubts at bay—what he did without even thinking about it at the time—that is so relevant to us all. He practiced giving the speech to his roommate over and over, an act that was more than mere preparation. By delivering the speech in practice, he was ingraining the feeling of giving the speech at the commencement; he was creating a sensory reality of the event before that reality even existed. And the result? He saw all the specifics. He saw himself up there. He saw the effect his speech would have on people. And he began to truly believe that he and nobody else should give this speech. As he put it: “Once you set out to do something, fear is turned into something else. When you’ve taken action you’ve already conquered the fear.

In my case, I told people that I was going to write the speech. I had a friend, a girl who told me after the fact that she’d wanted to write the speech. But she hadn’t said anything until after the due date—when it was too late. It was self-sabotage. She didn’t want to get rejected, so she didn’t mention it. Instead of saying, ‘I submitted it but I didn’t get chosen,’ now she can always use the excuse of, ‘Oh yeah, I just missed the due date. I never got around to doing it.’ I always had the feeling that she felt pacified somehow by simply believing she might have been chosen had she only tried.”

How often do we allow ourselves to be pacified by a lack of FutureVision? The word pacified, as it happens, perfectly describes the way we are sometimes left momentarily infantilized by fear, content to toddle about with a baby’s paci in our mouths. It’s cute when we’re small and helpless—when it’s appropriate. Not so cute when we’re adults. If our FutureVision is lacking, it’s almost certain that we’ll wind up pacified but disappointed. But when we picture ourselves achieving a goal, articulate the desire for that goal, and take action through simple and practical steps that are immediate and true, more often than not we move closer to creating our envisioned reality. 

What’s going on here? 

Is success due only to the specific concrete actions we take toward accomplishing our goals? Or… stay with me here: Could the powerful exercise of our imaginations influence some as-yet-unknown factors in the spiritual dimension? Could it be, that on some non-temporal plane, our heightened and highly detailed imaginations have created a pre-construction or pre-alignment of our desired outcome? In other words, might our imaginations have actually done some of the work of “fabricating” what we wish to make manifest? Clearly, there is currently no means of employing any empirical proof for this idea. I suggest it only because I’ve personally experienced the power of FutureVision so often. And conversely, I’ve seen how often my own goals have failed without it. 

Brain Bottle-Opener (BBO): FutureVision

Imagine it’s precisely three years from this very moment. Where are you? Whom are you with? What are you doing? How is your health? What are you working on? What is your mood? Exactly what do you see outside your window?

Take five minutes to write this all down. It’s important to include as much detail as possible. Consider no detail too small.

Be free to see yourself happy and successful in this exercise. I’ve done this BBO over the years with friends and I’ve seen how the people who paint their futures in muted tones of browns and grays wind up living in a world of brown and gray. Paint a vibrant, color-filled future for yourself.

Remember, this is a place where you’re not going to be judged on your accuracy. In other words, this is not the time to try and be overly realistic. I did this on the advice of my mother when I was twenty-two, and I’m amazed at how much of what I wrote, though far-fetched at the time, has come true today.

Real-World Applications

This BBO is perfect to try when you find yourself in transition. Perhaps you’ve just graduated from college and are looking to start your career. Perhaps you’re in between jobs or just looking for a change of direction. Creating a FutureVision statement will help you home in on a time far ahead of you. And most important, the knowledge that you gain will help you discover the best first steps to take on that journey toward new possibilities.