Guided script

Future Self Visualization Script

The full text of a 10-minute guided visualization, a 3-minute version, and debrief questions for coaches and groups.

What is a future self visualization?

A future self visualization is a guided exercise in which you imagine meeting yourself several years from now, notice how that person lives, and ask them questions. It is widely used in coaching. The closest researched version, the Best Possible Self exercise, raised positive affect and optimism in a 2019 meta-analysis of 29 studies, with the largest evidence base in students.

Source: Hershfield et al., 2011 · Jeannerod & Decety, 1995 · Dominican University 2007

THE SCRIPT

The full script (about 10 minutes)

Read it slowly, or record yourself reading it and play it back. The pauses matter more than the words - most people rush them. Choose five or ten years before you start, and read that number where the brackets are.

[Read slowly. Pause where you see “…”. About 10 minutes in total.] Find a position where you can stay comfortable for the next ten minutes. You can sit or lie down. Let your eyes close, or rest your gaze on a spot in front of you. Take a slow breath in through your nose … and let it go through your mouth. Again … in … and out. Let the next breaths find their own pace. Notice where your body is touching the chair, the floor, the bed … Let those places carry your weight. [Pause - 20 seconds] Now imagine that in front of you there is a path. It can be any kind of path - a road, a hallway, a trail through trees. This path leads forward in time. Start walking along it. With each step, time passes. Weeks … months … years. Let yourself walk until you arrive at a point [five / ten] years from today. You will know when you are there. [Pause - 15 seconds] In front of you is the place where your future self lives. Take a moment to look at it from the outside. What kind of place is it? … Is it in a city, a town, somewhere open? … What is the light like? [Pause - 15 seconds] You go closer, and the door opens. Your future self is there to meet you. Take in how they look. How they stand. What they are wearing. Their face - this is your face, a few years older. Notice how they greet you. [Pause - 15 seconds] Your future self invites you in. As you walk through their home, notice what is around you. What do they keep near them? What is on the walls, on the table? What does this place tell you about the life they have made? [Pause - 20 seconds] You sit down together. You have time to ask a few questions. Ask them slowly, and wait for the answer - it may come as words, a picture, or a feeling. Ask: “What does an ordinary day look like for you?” [Pause - 20 seconds] Ask: “What did you have to let go of to get here?” [Pause - 20 seconds] Ask: “What is the one thing I should start doing now?” [Pause - 20 seconds] And ask one question of your own - whatever you most want to know. [Pause - 30 seconds] Before you leave, your future self gives you something to take back with you. It might be an object, a word, or an image. Take it, and notice what it is. [Pause - 15 seconds] Thank your future self. Say goodbye in whatever way feels right. Walk back out of their home, and onto the path. Walk back through the years … the months … the weeks … until you arrive here, today. [Pause - 10 seconds] Feel your body where it is resting. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Take a deeper breath. When you are ready, open your eyes. Before you do anything else, write down: what you saw, the answers you heard, the thing you were given, and the one action you will take this week.

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SHORT VERSION

A 3-minute version for busy mornings

The short version skips the journey and goes straight to an ordinary day. It works well as a daily habit once you have done the full version at least once.

[About 3 minutes.] Close your eyes and take three slow breaths. Picture yourself [one / five] years from now, on an ordinary morning that is going well. Where are you waking up? … What is the first thing you do? [Pause - 20 seconds] Follow that version of you through the first hour of the day. What are they working on? Who do they talk to? [Pause - 30 seconds] Now ask them one question: “What did I start doing that got you here?” Wait for the answer. [Pause - 20 seconds] Take one more breath, open your eyes, and write the answer down.
FOR COACHES

Using the script with a client or a group

Future self visualizations are a common coaching exercise. If you are leading one:

  • Set it up first. Say how long it will take, that there are no wrong answers, and that the client can open their eyes at any time.
  • Read slower than feels natural. Your pauses are the client’s thinking time.
  • Do not interpret. Ask what they saw; do not tell them what it means.
  • Debrief before anything else. Details fade within minutes. Use the questions below.
  • End with an action. The debrief should close on something the client will do this week.

Debrief questions:

  1. What stood out most about your future self?
  2. What surprised you?
  3. What did your future self have that you do not have yet - a habit, a relationship, a way of carrying themselves?
  4. What was the answer to “what should I start doing now”?
  5. What was the object or word you were given, and what does it mean to you?
  6. What is one thing you will do this week because of what you saw?
MAKE IT WORK

Picture the path, not only the destination

A visualization that only shows the finish line can feel so good that it replaces the work of getting there. That is why the script asks what your future self had to let go of and what you should start now, and why it ends with writing down one action.

If you do the exercise regularly, spend part of it on the process: the ordinary days, the habit, the difficult conversation - not only the result. The research behind this is summarized in future self-continuity.

THE RESEARCH

What the research says

The most-studied relative of this exercise is the Best Possible Self intervention: participants write about their life in the future, imagining that everything has gone as well as it could, and in about half of the studies then spend a few minutes visualizing it. A 2019 meta-analysis by Carrillo and colleagues in PLOS One pooled 29 studies with 2,909 participants and found improvements in positive affect (d = 0.51), optimism (d = 0.33) and wellbeing (d = 0.33), with smaller effects on negative affect (d = 0.19) and depressive symptoms (d = 0.12).

The authors are clear about the limits: no study met all of their quality criteria, most participants were university students, only three studies measured depressive symptoms, and there was little follow-up beyond three months. So the evidence supports the exercise as a mood and outlook boost, not as proof that visualizing a future makes it happen.

Source: Carrillo et al. (2019), Effects of the Best Possible Self intervention: a systematic review and meta-analysis, PLOS One

A related exercise - writing a letter to your future self and then replying as them - is covered in how to write a letter to your future self.

You met your future self. Now keep them in sight.

Create a vision board with your own face in the life you visualized.

Generate My Vision Board

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