Future Pacing

Future pacing exploits the mind’s confusion between memory and imagination. Since the neurology of memory and imagination are the same, an imagined experience can be as powerful in affecting behaviour as a remembered one.

Future pacing involves helping someone to imagine ‘walking through’ a process towards a goal, using their senses to ‘experience’ each stage along the journey. Very often, this is done by laying out a time line and actually walking along it.

At each stage along the time line they can test the impact of their decision; they can also confront challenges in advance, so that when they encounter the situation in reality the ‘remembered’ experience will serve as a model for how to behave, even though this previous experience was imagined.

Having reached their ‘destination’ they can look back from a position of success and review the steps they took to get there.

Alternatively, you can start at the destination, asking what it is like to have already achieved the goal. When the subconscious has already experienced success, it is likely to take a more positive approach to the activities required to achieve it.