Future Tripping

On the phone this afternoon, a friend told me about the concept of Future Tripping. Wm. Paul Young defines it as…

creating imaginations of what is going to happen and then actually take a mental and emotional trip to live there for a bit.  It is ‘what am I going to do if _________ (fill in the blank), what am I going to say if __________, what would our family go through if _____________.

I rarely Future Trip in a negative way. I typically focus on the pros and ignore the cons. As I plan a project, I anticipate all the success and happiness that will come our way once the project gets going. Imagining life is going to be all good or imagining all that might go wrong is not the best use of time and energy.

Future Tripping activates very real emotions. If you Future Trip about all that can go wrong, you experience much of the fear, sadness or anger that you experience when things actually do go wrong. If you future trip about all that can go right, you might experience hope and excitement but reality will likely bring disappointment.

We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we happen to the world.

Not Future Tripping is all about ceasing the day, living in the now and taking no thought for tomorrow. It’s about intentionally controlling how you happen to the world.