The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos1 Jul 2024

Why We Sabotage Our Future Selves

We often do things that will make our lives more stressful or difficult in the future, like overspending when we should save, eating junk food that makes us feel bad, or agreeing to committments when we should protect our free time. Why does it seem like we're always sabotaging our future selves?

University of California Los Angeles' Hal Hershfield helps us find the balance between listening to what we want now and the preferences our future selves might have. And Dr. Laurie steps into an AI time machine to get some happiness advice for herself decades from today.

Try talking to the “you of tomorrow” using the MIT Media Lab’s Future You chatbot.

Experts Mentioned:
- Gal Zauberman, Professor of Marketing, Yale School of Management

Resources Mentioned:
- “Doing Unto Future Selves as You Would Do Unto Others: Psychological Distance and Decision Making," (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2008)
- Tupac Hologram Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre Perform Coachella Live 2012
- Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do by Jeremy Bailenson (2018)

Related episodes of “The Happiness Lab”:
- “How to Kick Bad Habits (and Start Good Ones)”
- “For Whom the Alarm Clock Tolls”
- “Choice Overload”
- “Stop Endlessly Chasing the ‘Next Big Thing’”

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(267)

Forget Small Talk: Go Deep Instead

Most of us default to small talk. It's polite, familiar, and feels like the safest way to start a conversation. But it may also be one of the biggest barriers to genuine connection. Dr. Laurie speaks ...

13 Jul 37min

What We Still Get Wrong About Happiness (Live at Dartmouth)

In this special live episode, Dr. Laurie takes the stage at Dartmouth College for a conversation with happiness historian Darrin McMahon. Together, they break down some of the biggest misconceptions a...

6 Jul 50min

Why the “Pursuit of Happiness” Is a Bad Idea

The “pursuit of happiness” is one of America’s founding ideals. But what if chasing happiness is actually making us feel worse? In honor of the 250th anniversary of American independence, Dr. Laurie t...

29 Jun 46min

Why “No Regrets” Is Bad Advice

We’ve all had moments we wish we could do over: the relationship we stayed in too long, the opportunity we didn’t take, the thing we said that we can’t unsay. Regret can feel awful. So it’s no surpris...

22 Jun 30min

Are Kids Today Really Worse Off?

We hear a lot about rising rates of anxiety, depression, and fragility among kids today. But when Harvard researcher Alexis Redding uncovered a forgotten trove of interviews with college students from...

15 Jun 43min

The Surprising Case for Oversharing

We’re kicking off a new season of The Happiness Lab with some happiness hot takes — bold claims that challenge conventional wisdom about what it really takes to feel happier. Today's hot take is all a...

8 Jun 39min

How to Feel Happier in Your Body with Jessamyn Stanley

As summer begins, many of us are bombarded with messages about how our bodies aren't good enough. But what if we embraced movement not out of self-criticism or shame, but self-compassion? To close out...

1 Jun 34min

What Your Negative Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

Negative emotions like sadness, anger, guilt, and anxiety can feel overwhelming. But what if those uncomfortable feelings aren’t problems to fix, but signals worth listening to? As part of our series ...

25 Mai 45min