Stumbling Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is not a self-help book, despite Mrs NP's attempts to wind me up. It's a treasure trove of insights into how humans behave. It's littered with little truths that explain how we behave like we do.....but the heart of the book is about how we're useless at predicting how we'll feel about something in the future.
When we try and picture the unknown, we simply cannot avoid doing it from our own frame of reference. I had the misfortune to work in call centre once, and whenever I have to talk to talk to some poor sod reading from a script now, I always picture them in the building I worked in, despite the fact their office will be different.
It's just like that predicting the future, we fill in the gaps with what we know now.........and nine times out of ten, we don't know were doing it.
That's why you need to be wary of any research asking people how they will feel about something, or what they might do. This filling in from our current frame of reference means that it's likely we'll say one thing now and do something different later.
There are other bits I think are worth sharing another time. At least it's a break from all the science nonsense.
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