How to Think About Your Future Self

The brain differentiates between thinking about similar and dissimilar others. We tend to think about our future self not as our current self, using different brain regions to think about future likes, dislikes, and goals. This leads us to treat our future self like a stranger, causing misery in life. We have a strange theory about our future self, seeing them as an aspirational self who has solved our problems, but also as someone who is not perturbed by much. This leads to making decisions that favor our current self, underestimating the enjoyment and pain our future self will experience. Treating our future selves as strangers means we may treat them poorly, just like we sometimes treat strangers badly.