Before Dr. Jesse Finkelstein went back to school for psychology, he was not orienting his life toward anything in particular.
He describes that period without much drama, which is part of why it is worth quoting. Drift is rarely dramatic from the inside.
I was just sort of meandering through life without an orientation around how I wanted my life to look, how I want to show up in the world.
That is a common enough description that it barely registers as a problem. Meandering is what most weeks look like from the inside. You handle what is in front of you, you handle the next thing, and the years accumulate without anyone ever asking you to state a direction.
What changed for him was DBT, and specifically the discovery that imagining a future is something you can do deliberately, as a skill, rather than something that either happens to you or does not.
What this is not
Two things get confused with this immediately, so it is worth clearing them out first.
It is not catastrophizing. Most people who spend time thinking about the future are rehearsing what could go wrong. That is a different mental activity with a different result. It narrows attention, raises physiological arousal, and produces no plan.
It is also not dissociating from the present. Mindfulness practice trains attention toward what is happening now, and a lot of people conclude from that training that thinking about the future is itself a lapse. It is not.
This is not imagining the future in any sort of catastrophic way, or in a way that takes us out of the present. This is imagining the future and thinking about what are the skills that we want to develop in our lives.
The distinction is in what the thinking is for. Rehearsing threat is involuntary and repetitive. Imagining a direction is deliberate, finite, and ends with something you can act on this week.
The actual question
The question is narrower and more useful than where do you see yourself in five years. It is closer to this: what do you want to be able to do, and who do you want to be while doing it?
Notice that the question is about capacities and conduct rather than outcomes. Outcomes are not fully yours. Promotions, relationships, health, none of these are under your sole control. How you show up is.
In practice the question splits into a few smaller ones that are easier to answer:
- What skills do I want to have developed a year from now that I do not have today?
- Which relationships do I want to still be in, and what would that require of me?
- What would make an ordinary Tuesday feel like it belonged to the life I want?
- If something I care about became impossible, what about it would I still want to keep?
The third one does the most work for most people, because it moves the question off milestones and onto the texture of a normal day, which is where nearly all of a life actually takes place.
Why this matters most when things are hard
The instinct is to treat this kind of reflection as a luxury, something for a calm season. It turns out to be most load bearing in the opposite conditions.
Pain, illness, suffering abounds, and to help balance that it is meaningful to have goals that we can look to, that we can continue to push ourselves towards, so that we do not necessarily get mired in hopelessness.
Hopelessness has a structure. It is not just low mood. It is the collapse of the sense that anything you do now connects to anything later. A person in that state is not lacking motivation in the ordinary sense, they are missing the link between action and future.
Holding a picture of a future you want does not remove pain. It does something more modest and more durable. It keeps the link intact. Even a bad week has a direction attached to it.
How to start without turning it into a project
People often stall here because they treat this as a planning exercise that demands a complete answer. It does not. A partial answer works.
- Write down three things you did in the last month that felt like they belonged to your life rather than to your obligations. Look for the common thread.
- Pick one skill, not one goal. Skills are trainable and you can tell whether you practiced.
- Check in weekly, briefly. Ten minutes beats an annual review.
- Expect the picture to change. Revising it is the point, not a failure of the first version.
The weekly check is the part that makes the rest real. A direction reviewed once a year is a document. A direction reviewed on Sunday for ten minutes is something that actually influences what you do on Monday.
Where this sits in DBT
This work belongs to what DBT calls life worth living goals, and it connects directly to the role of values in resilience. It also runs on the mindfulness skills, since imagining a future deliberately requires being able to direct attention on purpose. If you want the foundation, start with the What skills.
Dr. Finkelstein works with this in individual therapy at Axis Psychological Services in New York. If the meandering description sounds familiar, you can book a free consultation to talk it through.
Common questions
How is imagining a meaningful future different from worrying about it?
By what the thinking is for. Rehearsing threat is involuntary and repetitive, it narrows attention, raises arousal, and produces no plan. Imagining a meaningful future is deliberate, finite, and ends with something you can act on this week. Both involve the future, and only one of them leaves you with a direction.
Does thinking about the future conflict with mindfulness?
No. Mindfulness trains attention toward what is happening now, and many people conclude from that training that any thought about the future is a lapse. It is not. Directing attention on purpose is the underlying capacity, and imagining a future deliberately uses exactly that capacity rather than working against it.
What question should you actually ask yourself?
Not where do you see yourself in five years, but what do you want to be able to do, and who do you want to be while doing it. The question is about capacities and conduct rather than outcomes, because outcomes are not fully yours. A useful version: what would make an ordinary Tuesday feel like it belonged to the life you want?
Why does this matter most when things are hard?
Because hopelessness has a structure. It is not simply low mood, it is the collapse of the sense that anything you do now connects to anything later. Holding a picture of a meaningful future does not remove pain. It keeps the link between action and future intact, so even a bad week has a direction attached to it.
