We are all incapable of predicting what will make us happy, and that is because happiness is a feeling, and not an outcome. This truth creates quite a conundrum, as we are all constantly encouraged to “create a vision for the future, that if created, it will lead us to a happier life.”
But the reality is, that we are incapable of constructing an optimal future which isn’t assembled out of elements from past memories. Thus, our desires and ambitions are often a conglomeration of memories of what other people have told us represents the ideal way to live is. And using other people’s opinions -poorly recalled- isn’t a reliable map to lead us toward a more fulfilling life.
When our brain attempts to imagine a preferred future, it tends to rely upon past experiences and information which it has often mis-remembered. It then uses the memories like a gyroscope to maintain the status quo.
This is why so many people are the product of the environment in which they were raised. The social norms, values, priorities, and blind spots are remembered and embedded into their hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. And this is the reason why people who were severely traumatized by past experiences live in fear of it happening again – and on a level that it drives a lot of their behavior decades later – even when the old threat is long gone.
Despite our memories being so influential on our current and future behavior, its not a very good way to live in modern times. In fact, the neuroscience research even shows that a large percentage of our memories are fabricated.
To retain a memory, the brain utilizes a variety of different functions, with our strongest memories formed when strong emotions were experienced while we weren’t paying attention to a lot of the other things going on around us at the same time. Thus, we have a tendency to remember a distorted slice of an event, and not a holistic understanding of it. This is how a patient can come into our office and make a statement such as, “It was horrible, the dentist was standing on my chest with both feet when he was taking my tooth out.”
So, we can only recall small vignettes of our life, at a diminishing rate over time. And the pieces we can recall are admixtures of real experiences blended with others which have been colored, distorted, biased and misperceived.
Now, add to this fact that the brain has a “negativity bias,” where negative experiences are remembered with greater frequency and intensity than positive events. This means that when we have a strongly negative experience in life, and then we recall it, we tend to forget the good things which were simultaneously happening, as they were eclipsed by our stronger negative emotions at the time. (Our emotional system, driven by the limbic system, evolved for self- preservation purposes, and remembering negative events is at the top of its priority list). Given that it’s so difficult to remember the past accurately, you can now begin to understand how it’s even more challenging for us to predict the future, as predictions are simply projections of past memories- “future memories.”
Most dentists are unable to succeed at doing what they love because they aren’t aware of what they love to do in the first place. They know what they love the idea of, but when it comes to actual day-to-day practice -not so much. This is because what truly brings us joy and satisfaction are feelings which are often deeply embedded in our subconscious mind and are left there unexplored. (Carl Jung referred to this as “the shadow”).
Most of us at one point or another, have experienced listening to a highly successful dentist who is associated with a great deal of success. And as a result, we start to envision our life as being somehow merging with their’s – in our mind, we become a mini-version of that person, and it can become quite emotional. That emotion is imprinted upon our hippocampus, and all of a sudden, our “vision” of true success is represented by Pete Dawson, Frank Spear, John Kois… you-fill-in-the-blank.
Now, recall the disappointment when we returned home to our quite imperfect practice, and realized that our skills, priorities, and desires, aren’t very well aligned with what it will take to become the next Frank Spear. What we imagined to be our best possible future, was in fact the best possible outcome of the past of another person.
How to more realistically plan for a preferred future that you will actually love:
So, I have hopefully made the case that even when our dream for the future is a big goal we’ve never previously achieved — it is still being shaped by our past experiences.
In order to break out of a cycle where you allow your past (including your deeply embedded fears) to drive too much of your future decision-making, ask yourself these two questions:
- What future outcome would be so good, you wouldn’t even think to ask for it today?
- In your day-to-day life, what functions or activities really give you the most deep sense of joy and fulfillment?
By asking yourself these two questions, you are doing two things:
- 1. You will be tapping into the right hemisphere of your brain, which is the center of creative solutions and synthesis, and is less associated with specific memories, and more associated with themes, meaning, and the creation of new narratives.
- It will start to reveal to you denied feelings and desires you have repressed as you’ve tried to live other people’s life scripts.
- It will open your eyes to the fact that you only have one life to live, and finding your own way is the key to long-term fulfillment.
As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
And these are indeed wise words to live by.