Specifying Intention

I am struck again by the power of visualizing a specific future for creating that future. This is not a new idea, even in EMDR. Since the mid-1990s, Sandra Foster and Jennifer Lendl applied the sports psychology protocol for envisioning an optimal sports performance to the EMDR world. In sports psychology, the athlete imagines how they want their athletic performance to go, optimally. In EMDR, we apply this method to not only any other kind of performance such as public speaking, test taking, singing, acting, etc, but to any behavior or outcome wished for the future.

Several years ago I presented with Sandra and Jennifer at an EMDRIA conference in Canada regarding the use of the protocol for strategic visioning for executives, in which specific project milestones to project completion are imagined with increasing vividness. Resources needed, problems to solve, and so far are also vividly imagined and solved for or desensitized.

But one of my favorite applications for this method is for life planning purposes. It involves imagining living to a ripe old age, and paging through the scrapbook of one's life, assuming one stays on the course one is on now. Vividly imaging what will be in the book and what will feel disappointing, it clarifies ones values and alerts one to whether one is on course or off course. For example, if people realize that the scrapbook will emphasize career to the exclusion of family and creativity, that's an important clarification. One notes all the domains in the scrapbook -- does it include spirituality? community service? health? travel? or what? Categories that appear in the scrapbook in the imagined end of life, but are not being addressed currently, indicate that the person is out of alignment with their values and corrections are needed.

Then one asks -- Okay, if I want to include all those things by the end of my life (if I live to a ripe old age) then where do I need to be by age 70, 60, 50, etc. Where do I need to be in 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, six months, 2 months, 2 weeks. What do I need to do today to be where I want to be at the end of my life? And to check the work, ask -- If I had six months to live, what would I be sure to do in that time. If the answer isn't already accommodated on the life goals list, another key value has been uncovered.

This exercise can be varied to imagine this or that career choice, or other life choice, taken to its ultimate conclusion. The feeling tone and implications of each choice can be explored, and that information becomes part of the persons process in decision making.

Another important outcome of this process is that it tends to uncover unconscious impediments to personal fulfillment, such as: fear of failure, fear of disapproval, feeling one should be punished for something, feeling one is unimportant and should be sacrificed, and other beliefs that might interfere. As may be evident from the tone of those beliefs, these are often established early in life, as tiny executives make life decisions with insufficient wherewithall. Those decisions can stay in place for decades. I always imagine a toddler, tearfully trying to navigate confusion and hurt feelings about a problematic graham cracker incident in front of the refrigerator, resolving, "I'll never ask for anything again."

Finally, I use the imaginal future as a way to check completion of a particular EMDR session ("future template" was added to EMDR as a standard part of the procedure in the last decade, to insure completion. More broadly, whenever therapy is progressing, symptoms dropping away, and neither therapist nor client are quite clear on where the work is now, future template can resolve the question. Imagining the future across various life domains associated with the initial symptoms the client brought into therapy can reveal the progress made and the obstacles or questions remaining. This clarification really refocuses the work on remaining priorities.

Finally, I'll say this on a personal note. I am one of several people I know who completely transformed their own life based on these simple strategies. I chose my career this way when I had dropped out of college. I envisioned a life in a log house in the woods that was spiritually and intuitively developed, with tremendous results, beyond my wildest dreams. I asked for a life partner that would be a cowboy who could accommodate my intuition and spirituality -- and the universe in her wisdom gifted me a Native American. I have retooled and shaped my professional practice repeatedly in this way, in what seems almost effortless. Once the future has been vividly imagined, the path to it lies immediately at one's feet.