When I was a run coach in my 20s, I would cue my athletes to imagine themselves looking back from the finish line, imagining and feeling how good it feels to have given it their all and conquered their run.

Looking back as a triumphant future version of themselves gave them energy and inspiration in the present. This is future framing.

It’s a powerful, simple tool that I’ve known about for years. Yet, to be honest, I still spend a lot of time fighting time. It sucks the creativity and enjoyment out of what I’m doing and keeps my body in a state of stress.

I know I’m not the only one.

Subtle shifts in how we’re framing our relationship to time can have a huge impact on our life experience in the present.

Let’s explore how future framing works and how we can apply it to create more flow in our day.

Playing with Time

We all know from our present experience that despite the rigidity of clock time, our actual direct experience of time is very fluid. And from our quantum understanding of the universe, that’s how time really works. In the (possible) words of Einstein, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Further, based on the holographic model of the universe, all time exists simultaneously as potentials within the field of information that is behind our physical reality. So the past, present, and future versions of you exist—simultaneously. Knowing this, we can draw from the elevated emotional state of a realized future in the present.

Ready to start? It’s simple.

Zoom Out

Future framing allows your mind and body to rehearse your victory before it has even happened. Instead of starting at the beginning and staring up a long hill, you can imagine yourself at the top looking back at where you are now. That run, that project, your day, they’re already done.

You’ve already accomplished it.

How does it feel, having accomplished it in the way that brings you most alive? That feeling is your fuel. It fuels your present efforts and allows your mind and body to experience a future success before it has happened, priming you to realize your goals.

Zoom In

To answer the question “What would _____ look and feel like?” you have to actually experience it.

By imagining this future state, you’ve accessed it in the present.

Now you’re free to be present with every step because you know, step-by-step, that the finish line will come to you. All that energy that was bound in resisting and controlling time is now available to enjoy, to create, and to be at peace.

You can use future framing for any activity, big or small.

When I began chiropractic school, the thought of the thousands of lecture slides, hundreds of tests, and countless hours studying and practicing was paralyzing. By returning again and again to the truth that there was a future me looking back from graduation somehow having accomplished it, I was liberated to take things one step at a time.

When I set my timer to sit in meditation, I take a moment to experience myself looking back from the bell ringing. I feel what it will feel like having given myself totally to the practice. Then coming back to the present I can be with the breath, moment by moment, until my sit is done.

You can future frame something as big as a graduate degree down to something so small as your twenty minute meditation.

The power is yours.

Enjoy, practice, and repeat.

Future framing is one playful tool we can use to shift our relationship with time. When we’re in harmony with time, we’re free to heal, create, and connect in the present. That state shift changes everything.

I hope you apply this technique regularly and find it as valuable as I have. Enjoy.

In timelessness,

Dr. Kent