📚 The Book in 3 Bullets

• We are terrible at predicting our future emotions and recalling past events. Things typically aren’t as good or bad as we think they will be.

• Our brains fill in extraneous information about past memories and leave-out crucial information about future events. It is important to be cognizant of these tricks the mind can play.

• It’s hard to predict future emotions because we tend to base them on how we’re feeling in the present moment. Try to think logically about the future and not just about your current emotions.

👤 Who Should Read It?

• Anyone who is interested in how our minds play tricks on us, and what we can do to combat these tricks.

🌎 How the Book Changed Me

• This book has changed my perception of future events. I have found myself consistently imagining how badly unpleasant future events will make me feel when in reality, things typically aren’t as bad as you think they’ll be.

📖 Summary & Notes

• We often say others who claim to be happy despite circumstances that “they only think they’re happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.” Sure, but that’s the point!

  • Not knowing what we’re missing can mean that we are truly happy under circumstances that would not allow us to be happy once we have experienced the missing thing.

• Our brains are constantly doing a filling-in trick that adds extraneous details to the past to help our memories seamlessly recall events. It’s not a bad thing, because it helps us have a functioning memory, but we should be aware that our brains tend to add extra details that may not have actually occurred.

• When humankind imagines the future, it rarely notices what imagination has missed—and the missing pieces are much more important than we realize.

• The logical way to pick a vacation or a job is to consider both the presence and absence of positive and negative attributes, but that’s not what most of us do.

• We fail to consider how much our imagination fills in, but we also fail to consider how much it leaves out.

• Our conceptions of the future fill in extraneous information and leave out crucial information. Thus the futures we imagine contain some details that our brains invented and lack details that our brains ignored. This isn’t necessarily a problem except for the fact that we are rarely aware that our brains are doing this.

• The visual cortex is activated when you see an image, and also when you imagine images in your mind.

• The areas of your brain that respond emotionally to real events respond emotionally to imaginary events as well.

• We generally do not sit down with a sheet of paper and start logically listing the pros and cons of the future events we are contemplating, but rather, we contemplate them by simulating those events in our imaginations and then noting our emotional reactions to that simulation.

• One of the hallmarks of depression is that when depressed people think about future events, they can’t imagine liking them very much.

• We can’t feel good about an imaginary future when we are busy feeling bad about the actual present.

• It is only natural that we should imagine the future, but because our brains are hell-bent on responding to current events, we mistakenly conclude that we will feel tomorrow as we feel today.

• Because we naturally use our present feelings as a starting point when we attempt to predict our future feelings, we expect our future to feel a bit more like our present than it actually will.

• Beware of side-by-side comparisons as the seller typically tries to show you a less good product before showing you a better product they actually think you might buy.

• The comparisons we make have a profound impact on our feelings, and when we fail to recognize that the comparisons we are making today are not the comparisons we will make tomorrow, we predictably underestimate how differently we will feel in the future.

• When people are asked to predict how they would feel if they lose a job or a romantic partner or flunk an exam or fail a contest they consistently overestimate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.

• Once facts challenge our favorite conclusion, we scrutinized them more carefully and subject them to more rigorous analysis.

• It doesn’t take much to convince us that we are smart and healthy, but it takes whole lotta facts to convince us of the opposite.

• Distorted views of reality are made possible by the fact that experiences are ambiguous—that is, they can be credibly viewed in many ways, some of which are more positive than others.

• Being rejected by a large and diverse group of people is a demoralizing experience because it is so thoroughly unambiguous, and hence it is difficult for the psychological immune system to find a way to think about it that is both positive and credible.

• Humans are very good at turning bad experiences into valuable lessons and are able to find silver linings in tough situations.

  • This is because our psychological immune systems respond to intense triggers to help us cope with bad times.

• In the long run, people of every age and every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret the things they did, which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends.

• We are more likely to look for and find a positive view of things we are stuck with than of the things we are not.

• Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends.

• Humans are terrible at predicting future emotions. We overestimate how happy we will be on our birthdays, we underestimate how happy will be on Monday mornings, and we make these mundane but erroneous predictions again and again, despite their regular disconfirmation. Our inability to recall how we really felt is one of the reasons why our wealth of experience so often turns out to be a poverty of riches.

• Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who are in $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year.

• Most of us think of ourselves as more athletic, intelligent, organized, ethical, logical, interesting, fair-minded, and healthy than the average person.

• Learn from others’ experiences and emotions, you’re not that different from others and you’re not all that much better than them.