… to affirm and love others, the more you are going to see yourself with more love and appreciation. Remember, your relationships with others are reflections of your greatest relationship—which is the one you have with yourself.
Hyperbolic discounting is a cognitive bias that makes it hard for us to see our future selves as, well, ourselves. It’s why we’re more likely to choose short-term pleasures over long-term rewards; why we spend Monday night watching Netflix on the couch, regardless of what that’ll mean for Tuesday’s to-do list; and why saving for retirement can feel like taking money out of our pockets now in order to benefit a stranger in a future that seems impossibly distant.
“Visualizing yourself as rich or thin or whatever is unlikely to change your circumstances in life. But if it involves planning — you visualize doing well on an exam or performing well in an athletic event, and then you’re motivated to study or train — that’s different,” he says. “Then, you’re getting yourself to do the hard work that actually gets you to the goal.”