Often happy now means unhappy in the future
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Often happy now means unhappy in the future . How often have you found yourself reaching for the remote or for Instagram when you are bored? Or have to take a difficult decision? Or have hard work to do?
How often you went out with friends instead of studying?
Or read on your favorite subject instead of tackling an emotionally difficult situation or acquiring a skill that you find difficult?
Then you feel guilty for not doing your ‘duty’. To escape the guilt, you turn to more instant gratification. . You should not feel guilty. It’s human to seek pleasure now. Homo Sapiens evolved to survive in the wild. In the Stone Age, dangers were immediate and deadly. Your unconscious evolved to survive in the very short-term, several days at most. Because back then, that was all that mattered.
In addition to that, your unconscious is an opportunist. In the wild, everything is scarce. Hunter-gatherers don’t have houses, malls or storage lockers. So your unconscious thinks everything is scarce and pounces on anything that create pleasant feelings. Because pleasant feelings used to indicate behaviours that helped you survive: eating, running from lions, sex, conserving energy.
Now your unconscious does not understand the world has changed. Because the change has been too sudden. We went from hunter-gatherers to hipster Instagrammers in less than 10,000 years. That’s a blink of an eye in terms of unconscious evolution.
So now you unconsciously choose instant gratification.
However in the modern world, you are not at risk from immediate dangers, you are at risk from long-term problems. When your unconscious chooses instant gratification, it is at the expense of working for a better life in long term.
You can consciously create a habit against this. The habit to look beyond short term rewards, to try to see the long-term impact.
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