Can you imagine the unimaginable?

Can you imagine the unimaginable? Can you imagine how or what real estate will look like in 10 years from today? Jane McGonigal has just released her new book called “Imaginable” where she shares how to see the future coming and feel ready for anything – even things that seem impossible today. This is a very bold statement, imagining the future!

Hollywood has been producing fabulous Sci-Fi movies for multiple decades that really do end up being reality in the future. How about Captain Kirk from Star Trek in 1966 using a device that appeared to be a cell phone and who could ever forget the infamous “beam me up, Scotty” line. The future, as McGonigal shares, is within our imagination.

It is easy to imagine the future for a day, a week, maybe even a year. However, what about three, five, or ten years out. In our case, what can we imagine real estate to be like in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley as we put our imagination to work to look ten years into the future? For this exercise, we will not imagine what home values will become, but rather what does the new home look like and how do we live and enjoy our homes?

Ready?

Okay. Imagine yourself waking up tomorrow morning in your home. Picture it in as much detail as you possibly can. Which room are you in? What woke you up – an alarm, a nudge? Is it light out? How do you feel? And now that you’re awake, what’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Awesome, you just took your first mental time trip! Easy stuff, now let us imagine waking up one year from today. Take a few seconds and vividly imagine this moment. Take your time, are you waking up in a different room, a different city, a different property type, or even different house dwellers or owners. Is the morning routine different and if there was a change, has your home been a contributor to the change?

Do you like your new imaginative home?  I know it is only one year but think of what a 10% shift per year can result in over the course of ten years. It is massive, like Captain Kirk’s 1969 “beam me up, Scotty” phone turning into reality a couple of decades later.

Okay, imagine ten years from today. This one you may need to close your eyes and take a few minutes to really imagine. Trace out where your home is, a big city, underground, forested area, under water, or in space? What are you doing, who are you with, what do you hear, smell, and feel? What time of day is it and what are you going to do from your home?

Was that hard or easy? I can imagine your imagination could easily handle the day or even the year with ease. However, expanding your imagination 10 years out probably stretched you and possibly made the exercise difficult to grasp what your home would be like. By doing so, your brain has to invent a new reality instead of relying on what it already knows.  You are making the unimaginable imaginable!

If you are still reading this, you are probably asking what the point to this imagination exercise is. These future memories are planning and preparing for what is to come. McGonigal says revisit these memories often and focus on how it makes you feel. Does it give you joy or dread? These feelings help you make changes today rather than waiting for ten years to make the change to your world.

Our imaginations are powerful. In fact, you may have imagined your futuristic home to be underground where it feels like you are sitting on a beautiful white sand beach with turquoise water and the heat of the sun is kissing your body. The sun forces you to put on your sunglasses as you go through your workflow tasks on an imaginary screen in the sky. This is Episodic Future Thinking or EFT. You are stimulating the future. Stimulation means; encouragement of something to make it develop or become more active or making your imagination reality.

Imagine exercise done, what does your imagination home look like and how is life? I am guessing that your new home in the end is more affordable and has amazing technology that makes what seemed impossible today, possible in the future. Please share what your imaginative home looks like and what makes it ten years ahead of it time.