Anticipatory Thinking, The Problems To Come

Anticipatory thinking defines those situations in which we imagine how certain events can affect our plans. Somehow, if there is something that they repeat to us frequently, it is that it is not good to think about what has not happened yet because in that way, we increase the smoke of worry so that the fire of anxiety is fanned.

It’s true. Sometimes making fatalistic predictions ahead of time like true sibyls isn’t exactly the right thing to do for mental health. However, is it really negative to stop and think about what could happen in the short and long term? Is it inappropriate to draw in our mind a whole network of future possibilities and probabilities? The truth is that this approach can be our enemy as well as our great ally.

After all, projecting ourselves into the future and imagining what we could do under certain circumstances allows us to better prepare. This cognitive process has helped us survive and is our essential resource to face many of those challenges that life brings us.

What is anticipatory thinking?

Thinking about what I should do in case I suspend again that opposition that I am preparing is not to be negative. It is planning a response to a specific event. Imagining what would happen if I were fired from my job is not being fatalistic either, it is foreseeing a situation that, perhaps, is more than likely.

From the Department of Psychology of the State University of North Carolina they published a work in which they clearly delimited the importance of anticipatory thinking. It is neither more nor less than a very useful cognitive ability to move through those complex and ambiguous scenarios that surround us daily in our existence.

Therefore, anticipating results and forecasting future events is something we have always done. What’s more, these processes are part of those higher executive functions that differentiate us from other animals. Imagining, projecting, anticipating and drawing up a plan to face these situations allows us to be better prepared for what may happen.

Anticipatory thinking does not try to guess the future, it seeks to adapt to the future

That is the key. When you think about what may happen tomorrow, you are not playing a fortune-teller or trying to activate a crystal ball in your mind. Actually, what anticipatory thinking does is adapt to the future and this is a trait of human intelligence. 

In our attempt to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, the brain will always have an innate tendency to imagine what it might do under certain circumstances. When detecting possible risks, problems or threats, the most appropriate thing is to make that cognitive effort with which to draw up plans, activate responses, design action measures and solve problems.

Likewise, there is another undeniable fact: this process is one of the most sophisticated mechanisms that human beings can set in motion. Doing mental simulations about the future and designing action measures according to the possible demands, is a competence as refined as it is decisive.

Functional and dysfunctional components that we can activate with anticipatory thinking

Not everyone who anticipates future realities does so in a healthy and practical way. There are those who derive in fatalism, in feeding those negative valence emotions that generate blockages and anxieties. Let us therefore see what type of processes we should reinforce and which ones we should not.

Functional processes

Among the cognitive tasks that we must put into practice during anticipatory thinking are the following keys:

• Learn to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. We must understand them not as elements against which to block ourselves, but dimensions that we must face through adequate plans.
• We must make diagnoses, understand why certain things can or cannot happen.
• Gather information.
• Assess the credibility of that information.

• Relate those futures with our experience. What did we do in the past under similar circumstances?
• Plan an action plan. How should we act if this or that happens? Even more … if we applied these strategies, what consequences would it have?

Dysfunctional processes

With regard to the dysfunctional processes of anticipatory thinking, it is decisive to avoid a series of psychological drifts in which we fall many times without realizing it:

• Letting ourselves be carried away by emotions and being kidnapped by fear and anguish.
• Anticipate only negative and highly catastrophic events.
• Get blocked. Instead of thinking about coping strategies, we limit ourselves to only thinking in the most adverse scenarios without sense or logic.

conclusion

Anticipatory thinking is the cognitive resource applied by great chess players. Mentally visualizing the movements that the opponent can carry out, allows them to anticipate and think about how to counterattack. They don’t get stuck, they don’t let fear cloud their mind and objectivity.

That is the strategy that we should apply in our daily lives. Imagining what can happen tomorrow in those areas that make up our existence is what allows us to draw up response strategies to respond with intelligence, success and serenity.