Survival mode kills creativity and with it, the freedom to dream about your future.
It wasn’t until the fall of 2024 that I began to visualize my future. Before then, I hadn’t known what I wanted my life to look like. I had no vision, no idea of what I wanted my house to look like – if I even wanted a house – or what I wanted to be doing with my time.
I had no concrete wants for my future for a few reasons:
(a) I didn’t believe I would ever make it out of my situation as it was then (financially, socially, healthwise, etc.)
(b) The distance between the life I had and any semblance of a happier and healthier life was so vast that I couldn’t see a realistic way of ever reaching that point and “catching up” to others my age, or
(c) I was stretched so thin that I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to allocate to hypothetical scenarios (that only made me feel worse because they would remind me of how shit my situation was).
I had lived so long in survival mode that planning or even dreaming about a future was not an actuality or something I afforded myself. I was living a strictly head-down life and it’s only by removing myself from that lifestyle, and having time to cultivate peace in my daily life, that I am starting to get glimpses of what I want my future to look like.
I now have the luxury to dream.
I could write about how depression cuts short any desire to dream of the future or vent about the struggle of looking forward when your body and mind are stuck in the past, but today I instead want to share something a little more helpful, namely…
I cannot possibly recommend Pinterest enough as a digital vision board. A visual search engine, Pinterest allows you to search for all kinds of things and “pin” images to “boards” (i.e. folders) based on topic. Want to look at homes you love the interior or exterior of? Create a “home” board and search based on what you’re interested in – french countryside, modern chic, cottagecore, etc.
I love using Pinterest because I am a very visual person and when I see images of what I love, they seem more concrete somehow. It also takes me out of my head and is low-effort in terms of mental load. I don’t have to design a living room in my head, I can just scroll and click the stuff I like. I also see things I hadn’t thought of before, which makes me a little excited because now I’m learning new things that I like.
You’re already scrolling, so you might as well scroll for images of what makes you happy.
It helps me to separate my thoughts into different categories because it focuses my thoughts. Keep in mind that we’re dreaming right now, not planning. This is a light activity that’s meant to just let your dreams and wishes flow because when we’re living in survival mode, we shelve those things. Hope tastes bitter because we cut ourselves short with “I’ll never get there.”
But we’re not creating an action plan right now. We’re simply letting our hearts speak freely. Here are some categories I like to work with:
What do you want the interior of your apartment or home to look like? I specifically avoid zip codes, size and cost of the home because that moves us into plan mode and may make the difference between your current situation and the one you want all the more palpable, shutting us down from dreaming.
Do you want a lot of natural light? What color tones make you happy to have at home? Do you want a more modern place or something a bit more rustic? What is the mood you want in your home? Grounded and earthy, bright and energetic, etc.? Do you want a reading nook, a fireplace, or a rain shower head?
Write it all down even if it feels outlandish.
What kind of social life do you want to have? How do you want to spend your free time? Do you want to explore your city more, make new friends, connect with friends you haven’t seen in a while? Do you want to join a choir or get a cat or dog? Do you want to go to a botanical garden in the spring or spend time with a friend in a specific place? Maybe you want a recurring monthly coffee date with a particular person.
If you’re low on people you consider friends, that’s completely fine – and normal, actually. It’s not about where you are now, but rather what kind of life you would find enjoyable.
Try framing your thoughts in terms of what you want instead of what you don’t want. In other words, we’re aiming for something more than “I don’t want to feel like sh*t.”
Here are a few of mine:
Maybe you want to incorporate a 10-minute meditation into your mornings or a long walk outside on weekends. Whatever it is that you want that would benefit your mental health, add it in.
I would caution you to not include a weight goal here simply because women’s weight is such a loaded topic, but if you’ve gone up or down from your usual weight and you want to return to what you consider better for you, then go for it.
Here’s a few of mine:
I’m not focusing on one-time goals (e.g. climb Mt. Everest), rather I’m picking activities I want to incorporate into my daily/weekly life to create the kind of life that would make me feel good.
Other categories could include travel, family, work, etc. I would recommend staying away from finances simply because this also puts us back into numbers and plan mode, but if that helps you dream then go ahead.
What I enjoy about this exercise is that it allows me to dream without the pressure of figuring out how to get there. We so often kill an idea before it’s even had its time in the sun because it feels stupid or unrealistic or we don’t know how to get there right now. That’s okay though, and in fact, is the whole point. We don’t always need to be efficient and productive.
What this exercise also does is inject some joy into our hearts and minds, which are burdened every other minute of the day with all of the crap we carry. When we rewire our brains to think about good things instead of just the bad, it kind of takes trauma brain off the gas for a minute and gives us a respite from the constant barrage of sh*tness.
When we’re in survival mode, we focus on needs, not wants. But our wants are expressions of an underlying need for stability and joy. We need to make sure we nurture those things to the best of our abilities.
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