Best Possible Life

Background

This exercise is based on one called “Best Possible Self,” developed originally by Laura King, a Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University.

Objective

The exercise involves visualizing a “best possible future” for yourself in one or more of the following domains of your life: 1) personal, 2) relational, or 3) professional. In this exercise, you will first visualize, and then write about, all three domains. Specifically, you will imagine that in the next 10 years, your life has gone as well as it possibly could have. Then, you will write about how this life would look.

Please provide an email address to which your entries can be emailed.

Visualizing your future ideal self

This step involves visualizing how your ideal life would look, ten years from today, if you were able to accomplish everything you wished to accomplish in all three domains of your life.

To help you with this step, watch this video by Vishen Lakhiani, called “Three most important questions to ask yourself.” Get a pen and paper and get started!

Writing your narrative

This step involves elaborating on your responses to the 3 most important questions to flesh out your “best possible life.” Specifically, imagine that for the next ten years, life has gone as well as it possibly could have, and you find that you have been able to accomplish your most important goals on all three of the following dimensions: 1) personal, 2) relational, and 3) professional.

Now, in the space below, type out how a typical day in your life would look like. For example, in the “Relational” space, you could write:

I am married to this really wonderful—kind and compassionate—person that I met on a hiking trip in the Andes, and we now have 2 wonderful children, aged 8 and 6. We live on a ranch just outside the city, and own two wonderful horses.

This step of the exercise involves answering a few questions about your best possible life: