Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Tomorrow is not better than today
People are raised to believe that something in the future will be better: the job, the partner, the money, the house, the vacation. Anyone who lives expecting next week or next month to deliver the happiness they have longed for is chasing something that today already holds.
Worry runs on the same belief. People are programmed to worry and to suffer, and the habit can be reversed with a commitment to worry less and enjoy the day-to-day.
Picture trees moving in the wind under a blue sky: that much is enough to make a day holy.
Why do people overestimate future happiness?
Psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson call it the impact bias: people forecast that future events will move their mood further and for longer than they actually do. One reason is that people picture the single event and overlook everything else that will fill the days around it. Daniel Schkade and Daniel Kahneman found in 1998 that Midwesterners and Californians reported similar life satisfaction, though both groups expected Californians to be happier.
How much time does the mind spend elsewhere?
In a 2010 study in Science, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert used a phone app to ask thousands of people what they were doing and thinking at random moments. Minds were wandering 46.9 percent of the time. People reported being less happy when their minds wandered than when they were focused on the task in front of them, whatever the task was.
Why does the mind lean toward worry?
Psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues reviewed the research in a 2001 paper titled Bad Is Stronger Than Good. They found that negative events and information generally weigh more on people than positive ones of the same size. A common explanation is that noticing a threat mattered more for survival than noticing a pleasant surprise. The pattern appeared across areas including relationships, learning, and feedback.
More from Original Jurisdiction
