🧠How Your Memory Edits Your Life (And Why It Matters) (Experiencing vs. Remembering Self)
In reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" one of the concepts that stood out was this idea of the experiencing self vs. the remembering self and how the ending or peak moments of a situation can create a bias about the experience as a whole which then contributes to the experiencing self making decisions that are biased and potentially problematic.
It actually made me think of 's AMAZING group (dafree-community--a group about domestic violence awareness) and maybe how this principle applies to victims that continue coming back to problematic situations.
The experiencing self is the you that lives moment to moment. It feels the boredom, the joy, the discomfort, the calm. It exists only in the present.
The remembering self is the storyteller. It looks back, edits aggressively, keeps the highlights and the emotional spikes, and then decides what something “was like.” This is the self that answers questions like “Was that trip worth it?” or “Was that relationship good for me?”
(To apply it to poor relationships/bad jobs/chaotic dynamics--The experiencing self remembers the stress, the anxiety, the walking-on-eggshells feeling. It knows the situation feels bad while it’s happening. The remembering self, however, edits the footage. It keeps the intense highs, the relief after conflict, the rare good moments, and conveniently blurs the long stretches of discomfort. Then it tells a story like, “It wasn’t that bad,” or “But when it was good, it was really good.” So people go back. Again and again.Not because the situation feels good overall, but because the ending or the peak moments stand out. Your brain weighs the apology, the reunion, the occasional validation more heavily than the daily emotional tax)
Most of our decisions are made to satisfy the remembering self, not the experiencing one.
That’s why we endure miserable commutes for status, stay in relationships that look good on paper, and chase peak moments instead of daily well-being. The remembering self loves a good story. The experiencing self just wants fewer bad moments.
The implications of this is that a life that looks great in memory can feel kind of exhausting and not so great while it’s happening. And a life that feels good day to day might not sound very impressive when you describe it.
A thought to ponder about this: “How does this feel on an average Tuesday?” not “How will I remember this later?”
Question : If you optimized your life for the experiencing self instead of the remembering one, what would you change first?
POLL: When making decisions, which self do you think mostly wins?
Experiencing Self – I go with how things actually feel in the moment.
Remembering Self – I chase what I think I’ll remember as meaningful or exciting later.
A Little of Both – Sometimes I’m in the moment, sometimes I’m chasing memories.
Neither… I just wing it – My brain is chaos, let’s be honest.
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🧠How Your Memory Edits Your Life (And Why It Matters) (Experiencing vs. Remembering Self)
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