Source: lookbody.top
In a recent email, the author of the book The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace, Rod Friedman mentioned something very interesting. He told a story that happened to him and his daughter recently. A couple of days ago he went to the cinema with his daughter and although they had an unpleasant experience while watching the movie, they did not recall that particular story that way. They initially did not like the movie and considered it as not worth their time, but later on, as they were thinking a bit differently. They actually did change their opinion about the movie and thought that it was not that bad, and that it did deserve worth a watch. Rod considered this occurrence to happen as a result of our different selves that might change throughout different times.
“Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks about this in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow,” wrote Rod in his recent letter to his mailing list, which book I did not have the chance to read yet. According to him, we are not able to recall things in great details later on as we perceived them in our first confrontation with that experience. We change our opinions as we change our states and our associations about them. As a result he advises to keep a journal and writing down about the experiences that we encounter and the way we feel about them when at that day that we are part of them. Bad consequences that occurred because of our past behaviors might not look so bad for our future selves when we think about them. This way, we might be prone of the same mistakes again and repeat them.
Procrastination can be a specific example of this claim. We feel guilty and stressful when we start working on a project just a few hours before the deadline, but still keep procrastinating during other similar times in the future too. We do not commit to that past decision and resolve about starting working as soon as possible.
Our vision about our own future can is also something inconsistent that might prevent our current self from taking action and achieving our goals. Two Harvard researchers have made a research where they have encountered that we treat our future self as less important as opposed to our current self. We like to eat a lot of food now and do not take into consideration the fact that we might get fat and unhealthy in a couple of months. We like to procrastinate now and watch a movie rather than starting to write the book that we have thought about writing for such a long period of time.
If we do not want to be part of such calamities of our inconsistent selves, we first should be aware about this particular shortcoming that exists in us and cultivating a feeling of necessity to change this. A very good way that might help in this is by journaling about our experiences and then reflecting regularly as we go through them.
