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

what makes that future person “you”? What makes them worthy of your present self’s sacrifices and considerations?

Gilbert argues that we’re bedeviled by a “fundamental misconception about the power of time” and a dangerous misconception known as “the end of history illusion” — at any point along our personal journey, we tend to believe that who we are at that moment is the final destination of our becoming. Which, of course, is not only wrong but a source of m... See more

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.

those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.

The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly.

Gilbert, who argues that “the mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic,” explores the sometimes subtle, sometimes radical changes we can make in our everyday cognitive strategies in order to avoid ending up unhappy and disappointed by unlearning because we set goals for the people we are ... See more