The Psychology of Your Future Self and How Your Present Illusions Hinder Your Future Happiness

"It’s so strange how we’re able to carry forward this mystery of personal identity even when our present selves are so different from our future selves and from our past selves most of all. I think a lot about this question of, what is a person? Am I the same person as my childhood self? Sure, we share the same body, but even that body is so differ... See more

- “When making decisions about life right now, we often apply different standards to ourselves than to other people—but, when we make decisions about our future selves, we use the same standards. Thinking about our future selves has even been shown to resemble third-person thinking at the neural level.”

Our career decisions are more reversible than we think

Humans suffer from what psychologists call the end of history illusion. We tend to understand that we’ve undergone significant personal growth and changes in taste to bring us to the present moment, but we discount the fact that we’ll change in the future.

The end of history illusion is worth k... See more

Perhaps if one is pessimistic about the future, it is that much more important to embrace Future Self-Continuity, however paradoxically, because acting with the interests of the future in mind may the best way to make a future worth living in.

It’s so strange how we’re able to carry forward this mystery of personal identity even when our present selves are so different from our future selves and from our past selves most of all. I think a lot about this question of, what is a person? Am I the same person as my childhood self? Sure, we share the same body, but even that body is so differe... See more

But perhaps there is a middle ground between self and stranger. To the extent that someone imagines their future self to be similar to their present self, this sense of “future self-continuity” might predict their willingness to at least consider the interests of the future self.