The visual framework shown here is a way of organizing ideas about the future. It represents the future as a symbolic space, a ‘psychological landscape of the future’. It was developed as a simple and memorable checklist of what we need to hold in mind as we navigate in time.
It also opens the door to thinking differently about time and how the future is shaped.
The way organizations – and individuals – anticipate the future is based on prevailing cultural beliefs about time and causation. Currently popular futures methods rely on assumptions derived from Newtonian physics, even though these were superseded in twentieth-century physics and biology. But management thinking lags the scientific frontier and as a result tends to overemphasize a mechanistic approach.
The way we respond to the future is psychologically complex. We imagine futures of all kinds and respond with ideas, feelings and attitudes towards them. This array of psychological material includes hopes, fears, ideals, ambitions, intentions, expectations, images. All this is projected into the conceptual space we call the future, usually in a jumble, and in turn it shapes our actions in the present.
It therefore makes sense to become more clearly aware of our mental future content by sorting it into the different areas of the future landscape. This enables a progressive refining of future awareness, clarifying expectations and improving choices and goals.
While the conscious mind is in the dark about the future, depth psychology suggests that the unconscious mind does have access to it. The unconscious also appears to be involved in the process of shaping the future, through synchronicity, which Jung called an ‘acausal connecting principle’. Hence it is possible to become aware, at least in principle, of what the unconscious mind knows about the future, and perhaps to work with it to influence aspects of our personal or collective future.
Through introspective and constellation work we can discern future potentials and anchor our focus on ones we choose. We can also, so to speak, tap the power of synchronicity by resetting our personal ‘expected future image’ in different areas of life. The exact scope and effect of this inner work gradually becomes clear from experience.
This activity and approach to the future could be regarded as future mindfulness, and has the potential to bring us much closer than previous futures methods to an active relationship with the future, and to the meaning it holds for us. This can become an important aspect of navigating our future path.
We are not at the mercy of the future, despite appearances. Our personal future is ours to shape within boundaries to be discovered experientially. It is important to understand how the ‘objective’ future landscape is changing, but our actions should not be ruled by predictions, projections and scenarios. These can only help us see what potentials lie ahead. Our future ultimately depends on our willingness to choose freely and creatively, shaping our future focus based on our own preferences and aspirations.
