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Pocket Time Travel Guide for the Unhappy
The future is a mystery, and like any mystery, it cannot but grasp our attention and interest.
Just think about it: 12% of our daily thoughts are about the future! What’s going to happen to me tomorrow? In a week? In five years?
These are the questions I ask myself every day and I bet some of you too.
Imagining the Future
Psychologists believe that our ability to “look into” the future and anticipate upcoming events is crucial from the evolutionary perspective. Without this ability, we wouldn’t be able to anticipate events and adapt to novel situations.
But sometimes we do not just anticipate future events. Sometimes we “build” the future in our imagination in every detail, coming up with events that may or may not happen. Researchers have even come up with a name for this phenomenon–mental time travel (MTT).
MTT is not just about predicting what is going to happen next. It is instead an act of imagining yourself in the future in a specific moment and place. For example, if you are a law student, you may imagine a future self in a courtroom speaking to the jury. Or, if you are in a 9–5 job for the past twelve months without a vacation, you may imagine yourself somewhere on a beach in a silly hat with a colorful cocktail in your hand.
