Future-Wishing

Mindfulness, Future-Wishing and Hope

Mindfulness is a skill I introduce in many ways during sessions.  My favorite exercise is a mindfulness ecotherapy hybrid which encourages walking in nature with particular attention to sensory input.  How does the air feel on your skin?  What plants can you smell surrounding you?  Do you hear birds, wind in leaves, trickling water, and so on. 

Attention to the present is a formidable opponent to scary thoughts about the future and cycling ruminations about the past. 

But thoughts are not meant to live in one dimension.  While mindfulness can be an excellent addition to the coping skills tool box, attention to dreams can be a powerful motivator.  Blowing out a candle and making a big wish for the future is an anticipated highlight of many birthdays.  Diminished capacity to hope is a measurement on depression screens.  Imagining a future where current obstacles to the life you want to live are reduced or extinguished is a powerful therapeutic tool in creating steps to change. 

While mindfulness helps us to develop the capacity to be content and grateful for who we are, wishing and hoping about the future motivates us to move forward, and to be intentional in the building of who we want to become. 

Try the simple exercise below to develop your hope muscle and the capacity to engineer your preferred future.

Ecotherapy Future-Wishing Exercise

1.      Sit quietly in a space where you will not be disturbed.

2.      Close your eyes or leave them open, whichever feels most comfortable to you.

3.      Focus on your breath.  Don’t try to control it, just be aware of where and how you feel it as it enters and exits your body.   

4.      Let your imagination move to a future-wish you have related to nature.  It can be a small wish, a big wish, or anything in between.  It can be something you accomplish in your own home or something you would like to see change the planet. 

5.      Imagine every detail of this wish as it comes true.

6.      Make sure that you connect to any emotions that occur.  Allow emotions to rise, don’t try to block or avoid them, let them move through you.

7.      Move your attention back to your breath, once again observing how it moves in and out of your body.

8.      Finally, reflect on one small step that you can take in moving toward your nature future-wish.  Is it saving seeds from produce to begin a garden?  Is it researching local advocacy groups working toward addressing climate change?  

9.      Add additional steps as ready, and repeat this exercise as desired.

Wishing you peace of mind,

Kate.