How To Properly Dream About The Future - Self-development

Is it possible to think correctly about the future so that dreams are much more likely to come true? The editor-in-chief of the magazine "Our Psychology" Vladislav Bozhedai talks about the design of the future with psychologist Boris Zubkov.

Vladislav Bozhedai: Today we are talking with Boris Zubkov on a sore subject, in the new year it will become even more sore. This is a design theme for the future. What is the right way to think and dream about the future?

Boris Zubkov: It's true, you need to be able to dream about the future. Our brain, it turns out, is constantly busy with thoughts about the future, however, it does it in silence from us, from our consciousness. For our survival, the brain must know what will happen in a second, in two, in an hour, in a day. Our behavior is, in principle, determined by what the brain thinks about the future. But to learn to think consciously about the future, you need to work hard. In my training, I tried to collect what cognitive, social, experimental psychology knows today about how to effectively think about the future. Something we know, something, unfortunately, is still unknown. But it is becoming increasingly relevant, as one baseball player Yogi Berra put it, "The future is now not what it used to be."

VG: What did he mean? Too clever for a baseball player, with all due respect

BZ: He's an extraordinary baseball player. If any of us look back, 10, 20, 30 years, he will see that the world, of course, has changed. He had never changed so much before, no matter who said anything. And everything converges to the fact that further it will change even faster and even more unpredictable. There are people who believe that another 5, maybe 10 years will pass, and cars will drive on the street without drivers.

VG: They are already driving

BZ: One or two. And it will be much faster than even we think, we are not used to such things. Recently I saw an interesting slide: one car on the streets of New York among horses, and 13 years later - one horse among cars. It was a hundred years ago, and now it is accelerating. But I would like to know what will happen to us personally. Children come up and say: I want to be this and that. And you understand: in vain he climbs there, because this will not happen. And he asks an open question: who should I be? And you, stroking your nonexistent beard, do not know what to say to him, but you must know in order to at least prompt.

VG: My daughter, for example, wants to become a singer. I tell her: in 10 years robots will sing much better than humans, think about this, this profession is dying

BZ: Competitive professions will be highly competitive. Already today there is an overload of lawyers, in all, even the most litigious countries like the USA. Produced 40 thousand, and the need for 20. And in law firms will reduce them. Of course, there will be a few people left, but they will be super talent. Surely it will be so in all areas.

VG: Let's get back to psychology. What is the right way to dream?

BZ: There are topics that have been researched for many years, hundreds of experiments have been carried out. Something we know. For example, one should distinguish between dreams, fantasies and expectations. Fantasizing and dreaming is very good, but you need to understand what you are doing. There is such a German word "sauberdencken" - these are "dreams not based on physical laws." As in a dream, you took - and flew, this is a typical sauberdenken.

Sitting and thinking about the fact that someone will take and give you an apartment in Moscow, or, as in the song “I would like to live in Manhattan and share secrets with Demi Moore” is a typical fantasy. How to distinguish it from expectations? There were many experiments: women were invited to participate in diet programs. And some were asked to fantasize about how they would lose weight, while others were asked to realistically assess their expectations. “How much do you think you will lose weight in a month?” They asked. Those women who had positive expectations ("everything will be fine, I think that 80 percent that I will lose 5 pounds"), expressed in numerical value and in probability, really achieved their goal. And those who dreamed: "Oh, I will come, I will meet with a friend, all so slender," - did not achieve anything, moreover, some also gained weight.

To distinguish expectations from fantasies, simply ask a friend how likely they think your scenario is. If he says that 0 to 1 percent is most likely a fantasy or an expectation that can be thrown away immediately, it will not work

VG: Is it like a self-fulfilling prophecy? You ask yourself: "How likely is it that I will lose 2 kg within a month?" And if I answer myself, honestly, that I will lose weight, I believe in it, then the probability of this is really high, I understand correctly?

BZ: There is "the devil in the details" because well-balanced expectation means admitting obstacles.

VG: “Well weighted” is a very correct word

BZ: Acknowledging obstacles is the obvious way. Why would a billionaire dream of a Ferrari when he can go and buy? It is foolish for a person who will undergo liposuction tomorrow to dream of losing three kilograms. If you work in a candy factory, it's hard to fantasize about chocolate. And if there are obstacles, it makes sense to dream. And if you admit obstacles, dreams turn into expectations. In my experiments, I have observed where people look when they think about the future. It found that people who thought they had a 50 to 70 percent chance of exercising looked in a very different direction than people who had higher expectations. They looked to the left, that is, "into the past." Maybe we look too much in the past. This does not mean that the past is bad and the future is good, because expectations are the capitalization of past experience. You can expectwhether something will turn out tomorrow or not, just based on experience. Therefore, if they look into the past and find problems there, they may have low expectations. There are things we don't know.

VG: Is it the right dream or, as you call it, the expectation - is it first to see, then to realize and detail the obstacles?

BZ: Yes. And an even greater role of vocabulary and semantics in this. No matter how we think about something, we think in words. We are learning the technique of mental contrast. There is such an exercise: write the text of the New Year's wishes and then, putting a full stop, write 5-10 sentences. Do not be stingy, people are often so stingy, as if they take money for every word. Having written this text, you can see what technique of thinking was used.

If a person writes only about the present, for example: “I am a merchandiser, I go to work every day, and I’m sick of it all,” this is a technique of thinking about the present. Some people use the technique of thinking about the past, they say: "I was such a guy before!" Another technique, when a person says: “I want to live in Manhattan and share secrets with Demi Moore,” is only about the future. This is what is called daydreaming. And if a person says: "Oh, I would like to live in Manhattan, but I live in Syzran" - there are two elements: about the future and about the present, mental contrast. “I live in Syzran, but I would like to live in Manhattan” is a reverse mental contrast when we first talk about the present, and then about the future. It turned out that mental contrast is the only technique that really works. When you first talk about the future, and then about the present.

VG: I ask the residents of Syzran not to be offended, it's a beautiful city, I was there

BS: When we talk about the present, and then about the future, our brain does not build any logical connection. “I'm a store manager, but I would like to have a Ferrari. “So what?” The brain says. If it's just a dream, the brain doesn't do anything. But when we use mental contrast: "I would like to buy myself a Ferrari, and now I am this and that," the second part of the sentence is what bothers me. "I would like to lose weight, but I just can't give up the donut."

This is a nominal presentation: first, you talk about the desired future, and the brain should be motivated by it well enough, and then you talk about obstacles. And then they form a single whole

The brain understands that in order to get what it wants, it needs to overcome the obstacle.

VG: Is there self-programming using semantics, that is, words and the correct construction of sentences? Is this confirmed experimentally?

BZ: Yes, and it turned out that this technique breaks all records. For several years that I have been doing this on my own, and in the last few months since I began to conduct this training, I realized that this is a really "hot" topic. Those people who have started to think a little more actively about the future, please continue to do so, because you will have an advantage. We will all have to find some other world. You need to know what to do in this world, how to feel, to enjoy what is happening. There must be a source of optimism. It is clear what to do, what not to pay attention to, what it is useless to fight with. For example, some dictator, no matter how much he measures for himself, this is all nonsense, the world will change faster than he has time to get out.

VG: Technology will defeat evil anyway

BZ: Yes, obviously. This is a very interesting topic, because for how many thousands of years we, people, have not invented anything better than democracy, and it, too, is still rubbish, because all sorts of despots revel in it. We are inventing some kind of super transistors, but we cannot do anything here. And it looks like technology will do it for us, they will be able to create something fair.

VG: Let's get back to “our rams”, to the personality. The first technology is the technology of the correct vision of the future, built on mental contrast. “I want to have a Ferrari, and now I am publishing the magazine“Our Psychology”. What do I need to do?" The brain begins to build, the self-programming mechanism turns on. By the way, should we talk about it out loud? Should I write about this?

BZ: At the very least, you need to write, because after all, writing is such a structured thing, it can lead our thoughts to a logical image. You can say it out loud and talk to other people. You need to ask other people, they can often give a more accurate assessment of your wishes. There was, for example, a startling study that when asked a person's friends and acquaintances, they in principle can predict with greater accuracy how long they will live. We are often over-optimistic in our plans. If you don't have friends, you can develop your imagination.

VG: Make yourself an imaginary friend?

BZ: I mean imagining in general, asking myself how other people would rate the likelihood of an event if I asked them. There have been experiments where people were asked about the desires of another person, and they made an assessment. Then this person was asked: "What do you think, how did they evaluate?" And in principle, his assessment converged, this is how he understands other people, "theory of mind". We, in principle, understand other people quite well, because we also understand ourselves through others, this is a good technique. Ask people how they rate your plans, and if they don't lie, flatter, or blunt you, they can say useful things.

VG: That is, all these advice: “do not listen to anyone”, “go to your dream no matter what”, “only those who have never listened to anyone, but only went forward, are trying to achieve it,” they, in fact, are not work very well?

BZ: For example, a guy fell in love with Olga, and everyone in the yard says to him: "Leave her!" And he says: "You are all fools, you do not understand anything, she is the best." And then it turns out that they were right. You can ignore the majority, but you need to have a reason for this.

VG: You can, at least, write down, it is desirable to discuss. What other subtleties are there in the right dreams?

BZ: Lots of different exercises. For example, here's an interesting thing: once a week, and some can do it every day - write 5 things for which you are grateful. It would seem that this is such a religious, mystical nonsense. But psychology has shown that this technique works. There is adaptation: we get used to everything. A person will win a billion dollars and will say: "I will be happy until the end of my life." This is not the case. Or: "I want to live by the sea, I will swim every day." And after six months you can't drive there with a broom. We know that a person would go crazy to enjoy everything constantly. You get good moments in life: love, money, recognition, and you adapt to it quickly.

VG: You take it as immutable and stop thanking

BZ: Yes, and all these good things raise the level of happiness. By the way, the level of happiness is easy to measure: just ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how happy you are. So you got all these good things, so what do you need now, like a drug addict, to demand a new dose? If you just remember these good things that you are grateful for, you will re-adapt yourself a little. You are using again the same good that you received. And it really works.

VG: So we will write thanks to people, life, God …

BZ: It doesn't matter who the object is, the main thing is for what. To thank some mystical creature is not the point, please.

Another useful exercise: every day, or at least periodically, write positive forecasts for the next day, what good is likely to happen to me

Even “it will snow tomorrow” is also useful. Experiments have shown that if you do this for 15 days in a row, for example, your level of happiness will increase. This is a measurable thing, you can talk about happiness as about body temperature, you do not need to idolize it in this regard. It is foolish to be an unhappy person for no reason. If there is an opportunity to become a little happier, all the more simply and for free - why not? After all, happiness improves other characteristics of life. You can also think about negative things, then the damage from them will be estimated less. The main thing is that the ability of personal predictions is trained here.

VG: You, willy-nilly, think about tomorrow and somehow build yourself up

BZ: We need to think about what will happen in a month, in six months, in a year: just take it and think.

VG: This relieves anxiety: when a person begins to predict, he already understands what may happen to him

BZ: I say all sorts of things that I believe will be in the future. And people say, "stop talking about these horrors." But I don’t understand, in principle, these are normal prophetic, maybe they sound like horror, but I don’t see anything negative in them.

VG: The biggest horror is probably an escape from reality

BZ: Yes, people want to remain in the certainty that is today, although our reality for people 30 years ago is a nightmare of nightmares. Our fathers and grandfathers could get a job and work there all their lives. If they looked at what is happening with the labor market, they would immediately be horrified. We must go with an "open visor" to change, be ready. And then, it's a great thrill to even dream of what will happen.

VG: 25 years ago, being a taxi driver, at least in Moscow, was cool. And now new technologies have come, and now the respected profession is not so valuable. And if 30 years ago, a taxi driver were to say: "It is very hard and will have to work a lot, and you will receive less than some programmer." Previously, a programmer received 90 rubles, and a taxi driver could get 500. But now everything has changed dramatically

BZ: Even the statements of politicians about creating new jobs seem ridiculous. It's just that if you even think about taxi drivers, about this one profession, about what awaits them in the future, then you understand that no one can find a job for these millions of people, there is simply no job. When you listen to politicians who talk about what will happen in 20 years, it's generally just ridiculous. He doesn't know what will happen to him tomorrow. Everything falls apart, and you understand that we are being deceived. Through thinking about your future, you begin to understand what is happening around you, what to pay attention to and what not. How to build your trajectory in life.

VG: If you do not build your trajectory of life, external forces build it for you. Friends, take your future into your own hands or someone else will take over your future

BZ: There is such an exercise: imagine a meeting with yourself 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago. What do you tell him? Imagine meeting yourself when you enrolled in a military college. Would you advise yourself to finish it? A lot of things that were troubling then now seem to be just nonsense.

VG: And what does it give?

BZ: If you just write down or remember what you say to yourself in the past, then take these words and put them in the mouth of your future, which came to you 10 years later today. And it will be funny for you, because in what you are sure of today, what you consider beautiful, reasonable, in 10 years it seems completely different. If you feel it, you will feel the breath of the future.

VG: I remember that 25 years ago I wanted to buy a Tavriya car, because I thought that I would not have enough money for a Zhiguli. I dreamed of a Khrushchev in a panel house

BZ: Imagine that you meet with yourself. What do you tell him? “Come on, of course, buy a Tavria car?

VG: For example, I would tell him that there is no need to worry about it. Better start learning a foreign language

BZ: You immediately understand everything, you can lose paternalism in relation to yourself. You do not wish yourself anything bad, so your advice will always be full of goodness and rationality. But you may inevitably face some difficulties, because he may ask you: "What should I do?"

VG: What is the psychotherapeutic mechanism here?

BZ: This should be tried, you will understand. Benefit precisely in terms of personal future design.

You will just feel that all your self-confidence 25 years ago, the then interests, they are ridiculous

Here comes a teenager without a hat. And you know why he goes without a hat, and this is nonsense. And you understand this only later …

VG: When the brains are frostbitten, only when there is meningitis, you only understand how my mother was right

BZ: The idea that it's beautiful, all this flirting, sexuality, that tough guys don't wear hats, I'll look like a freak, no one will love me - it's all such nonsense that can only be understood from afar. This is such a small example. And there are plenty of such examples. And you will feel what you need to do today. A man from the future has come and he will tell you: “What are you doing? Take care of this, it's interesting. " There is such a psychotherapeutic effect, you can even cry, it's very nice.

VG: Take pity on the inner child in yourself, adopt yourself, pat yourself on the head, praise

Today we talked about four secrets of the design of the future and we hope that it will help you a lot. Everything we've talked about is based on the latest neurocognitive research

BZ: And I want to wish you not to be shy and dream, fantasize, sometimes understanding where dreams can come true, and where they can just tell you the direction of your life, be sure to make wishes for the New Year. Scientific or not, the New Year is a time of miracles, and may your most cherished desires come true!

VG: Dear friends, Our Psychology magazine wishes you a Happy New Year and wishes you more desires

Photo: © Oksana Gilman / Photobank Lori