Would you buy moments of pleasure now for the price of years of misery later?

The answer is Yes, you do this trade every day.

Cookies now, diabetes later.

Less sleep now, illness later

Impulsive acts now, consequences later

Social media now, inability to focus later

Procrastinate now, unfulfilled dreams later

Workaholic now, loneliness later

Lazy now, unfit and fat later

Avoid problems now, worse problems later

Avoid fears now, phobias later

Instant gratification now, miserable life later

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Your mind is built to choose the present, not the future. Your monkey unconscious has evolved to ensure your survival in the moment. It does not understand the future beyond tomorrow. In the wilderness the danger was always immediate.

Now we believe we rationally plan for the future. But we don’t really. Future discounting is perceiving benefits as diminishing the further in the future they are. This has been proven with things like small amounts of money.

Yet if we look at our lives, it is clear we heavily future discount everything. So we take the easy road despite being able to rationally understand it carries a heavy toll in the future. Despite our rhetoric, we are ruled by our future-blind monkey.

The way out is not to believe we can instantly change an unconscious mind that evolved through eons. The way out is to change the environment. As Robert Sapolsky beautifully concludes: People do the right thing when it is also easy, not when it is hard.

If we want to take better care of our future selves, we need to engineer a society where it is easy to make the choice that benefits future you. We need to make bad choices harder to make, less rewarding and less accessible. And make good choices much easier, reward them and make them ubiquitous.

On an individual level, I work with you to help you create this environment for yourself. Message me if interested