Another nugget from The Other Side of Change by Maya Shankar: Research shows that we greatly underestimate how much we’ll change in the future, even though we can fully acknowledge that we’ve changed quite a bit in the past. This bias is known as the end of history illusion, named by researcher Dan Gilbert and colleagues.
Big changes that happen to us can unleash profound changes within us. Because we forget that we change, we don’t do a great job at affective forecasting – knowing how we’ll feel about something in the future. But often, after a significant life event, or when life has deviated a lot from its expected path, we are not the same people, and we feel and experience things differently.
So let us remember that we can hold ourselves lightly — who we are now is not who we have always been or will always be. We learn, we evolve, our feelings and opinions change. We expand, our capacities grow. We can look towards the future, trusting that our future selves are capable – of rising to the moment, of making good choices, of learning from mistakes. And of being okay even when life does not go as planned.
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