We all have a fantasy version of ourselves waiting in the wings—future us is always wiser, more disciplined, more courageous. Future us will finally qWe all have a fantasy version of ourselves waiting in the wings—future us is always wiser, more disciplined, more courageous. Future us will finally quit that toxic job, walk away from the unhealthy relationship, start the novel, get in shape, stop repeating the same old patterns. Future us has it together.
Psychologists call this affective forecasting - our tendency to believe that our emotions, motivations, and behaviors will somehow be different in the future than they are now. Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist, has spent decades studying this phenomenon. In one study, Gilbert and his colleagues found that people dramatically underestimate how much they will stay the same in the future. They assume that their tastes, values, and desires will change significantly over the next decade - only to look back and realize that, in fact, they haven’t changed much at all.� We tell ourselves that next year we’ll be more motivated, more decisive, less scared. But the reality is, future you is just present you, plus time. And unless something forces us to change, we often stay exactly the same.�
Which is why the most unsettling, liberating truth in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is this: no one is coming to change you, or save you. Not your therapist, not your partner, not some future version of yourself who magically has it all figured out. The work—the real, brutal, life-altering work - is yours alone.�
And yet, paradoxically, this is also the good news. So maybe you should talk to someone. But also, maybe you should listen to yourself. ...more
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