Experiencing and Remembering…
I've been thinking a lot recently about the 'Experiencing and Remembering Self', a theory coined by Nobel Prize winning economist and psychologist, Daniel Kahneman.
Our Experiencing Self is how we live in the moment and if you're in tune with it you'll know when you are feeling joy and pleasure as well as stress and irritation, and how and where to seek them out, or avoid them if you can.
I'd say I'm in tune with my 'Experiencing Self' and it drives a sense of wellbeing in my life. I'm good at fitting in the vitamin P (pleasure) I need to make me happy and have a positive structure to my day. Winning the morning to win the day (as well as the afternoon and evening as much as possible).
We can make a determined effort to be upbeat and find joy in the simple things.
Your Experiencing Self is key to being happy in your life
Kahneman himself used to lean toward the Experiencing Self as the one that will drive your overall wellbeing - although towards the end of his life he changed his mind.
The Remembering Self is more complex and will drive how happy are you with your life.
One of the paradoxes with the Experiencing and Remembering Self, is that what makes your Experiencing self happy is highly unlikely to be the same as for your Remembering Self.
Remembering Self
I often look back and think I was a bit of an idiot and immature when I was young, and wish I was kinder and more confident.
I tried to be cool to cover up showing any vulnerabiity!
We can't go back and change things. And, well, yes we can go back!
We can revisit the stories we tell ourselves.
Your life story is not your life, it’s just your story (Mojo Crowe).
There are also most likely thousands of memories that that you've essentially forgotten or glossed over - according to Kahneman over the average life about 600 million of them.
What we remember tends to be changes and significant moments. It will remind us of challenges that we've overcome - the good times we've had. Our Remembering Self can help us, if for example, we are going through a difficult and stressful time at work, it can tell us we've been through these things before and got through it.
There may be a time when your most difficult episodes become your best and often funniest stories.
Where it will go in an opposite direction to our Experiencing Self is that it will remember the volunteering you did at the old people's home; that you got up early every Saturday morning to take your children to clubs; that you made an effort with elderly relatives, that you stared silently at a painting for three hours, that you did and achieved many things your (rather more selfish) Experiencing Self would scream at you to give up!
But our Remembering Self can also hold us back.
It is closely aligned with an old foe - our in-built protector from sabre tooth tigers - negativity bias! And guess what? It will often lead with the adverse stories - our mistakes, our f*ck-ups, our self-limiting beliefs - that we're just not very good or worthy.
With any issue, perceived weakness or fear the thing to do is not to run away from it, brush it under the carpet, but go to it....address it head-on. These stories we tell ourselves are very unlikely to be our best ones and there are literally millions of others we can use. You don't need to carry on thinking that you're not confident because it said it in school reports a hundred years ago.
I met an old friend recently and naturally we spoke about old times. He remembered things I'd totally forgotten and likewise I'd held on to different memories. When we parted ways he said we were very daring when we were young. It certainly sounded better than being an idiot.