Envision Your Future
ENVISION YOUR FUTURE® is a positive youth development program that guides youth in a reality-based self-concept that omits the notion of things just happening to people without their influence in the process. The four concepts described below go to the basic idea that we are all responsible for what happens to us because of what we think about and feel most of the time. It is through our thoughts and feeling that we create the life we want to live - or not to live.
ENVISION YOUR FUTURE® encourages youth to discover the choices they have and are responsible for; the power of self-influence in choosing a direction in life, harnessing their energies, talent and skills in manifesting their dreams/goals, blueprinting their goals and identifying the people and resources that will help them achieve what they set out to do. ENVISION YOUR FUTURE® has been designed to be facilitated by both professional and non-degreed people without having to go into the underling concepts themselves.
Cognitive Field Theory starts with what is right with a person and stresses problem solving and creativity with a focus on reflective thinking. The implementation is facilitated rather than didactic with the facilitator being a guide who uses questions (The Socratic Approach) to create interest, awaken critical thinking and promote individual problem-solving and solution-making.
Self-determination Theory (SDT) is a macro-theory of human motivation concerned with the development and functioning of personality within social contexts. The theory focuses on the degree to which human behaviors are volitional or self-determined - that is, the degree to which people endorse their actions at the highest level of reflection and engage in the actions with a full sense of choice.
With Motivational Interviewing, responsibility for change is left with the youth. The overall goal is to increase intrinsic motivation, so that change arises from them and serves youth in achieving goals based on values. It is not an instilling or installing but, rather, an eliciting, a drawing out and sparking of motivation for change from within the person.
A key component of the spirit of Motivational Interviewing is its collaborative nature. The facilitator avoids a one-up authoritarian stance, instead communicating a partner-like relationship. This method of motivational interviewing involves exploration more than exhortation, and support rather than persuasion or argument. Today’s youth, the iGeneration, want to find their answers. ENVISION YOUR FUTURE® is able to engage the youth in their life and future and in creating the intrinsic motivation to make healthy choices. With the motivational interviewing technique, the facilitator does not answer questions, but rather turns the question or challenge back to the student for critical thinking, “possibility” strategies and solution-making.
In Mental Contrasting people first imagine the attainment of a desired future (e.g. a doctor, auto mechanic, lawyer, doing a term paper) and thereafter reflect on the present reality (obstacles/barriers) that stands in the way of attaining the desired future (money, running with the wrong crowd, drugs, academics). By recognizing the obstacles in obtaining a goal the youth can develop strategies to take actions in achieving their goals.