Envision Your Best Possible Selves: Professional, Social, and Personal Domains

Tracy Lefebvre • December 5, 2023

Why You Should Try It

Sometimes our goals in life can be elusive. Other times, we look for ways to evaluate opportunities before us. Often, our minds and non-conscious habits can get in the way, making it difficult to see our best path forward. 


In The Best Possible Selves Exercise, you imagine your life going as well as possible, then write about the best possible future. 


The objectives of this exercise are:

  1. To provide your brain with what it needs to filter in new information that supports you in meeting your goals.
  2. To increase your happiness in the present while paving the way for sustained happiness in the future. 
  3. To help you move beyond reacting to situations based on experience and open you up to ‘seeing’ new ways of being and doing. 
  4. To share a concrete tool to aid in education and preparation as you move toward taking action toward your goals.

Why It Works

By thinking about your best possible future self, you will learn about yourself and what you want in life. This way of thinking can help you restructure your priorities and increase your sense of control over your life by highlighting what you need to do to achieve your dreams.

The Process

Select three separate times to meet with yourself (or your coach) to imagine and describe your best possible self in three domains: 

  1. Personal Domain: skills, hobbies, personality, health, accomplishments, etc.
  2. Professional Domain: job, a sense of purpose, education, skills, retirement, income, etc.
  3. Social Domain: romantic relationships, friends, family, social activities, etc.


Step 1

Select Domain


Step 2

Take 1 minute to envision in your mind what your best possible self in the selected Domain looks like and create as much detail as possible.


Step 3

Write for 5-minutes or more about your best personal self from the first-person perspective. “I am… I feel… I….” Include every detail possible.


Once you’ve completed your notes, examine what you have written. You (or a thinking partner such as a coach) can look at the language and dive deeper into the meaning to create a detailed Best Possible Self destination.


Resources

Greater Good Science Center ~ Berkeley https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/best_possible_self

Laura A. King, Ph.D., University of Missouri 

Sonja Lyubomrisky, Ph.D., University of California

Jeffrey Huffman, M.D., Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital

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