Take Some Time - Your Future Self Will Thank You

Day 5
Awake: 6:36
Left For Work: 7:10
Video: Daniel Goldstein - The battle between your present and future self

Who is our future self? If you think about it, our future self could be constituted as even being one second beyond now, or now, or now.  If this is difficult to imagine or really personify, think of a time you made a decision, and the second you made it, you knew it was the wrong one.  The present self decided, and within one second, the future self regrets it.  This begins to present a problem if and when we stop taking our future selves into consideration.  this could consist of something as small and short term as eating 10 Big Macs on a dare, or as important and long term as not having any retirement savings. 

Goldstein talks about a "commitment device", a psychology term of creating restraints and reward/impediment-based plans to achieve goals.  this is exemplified in the story of Odysseus, wherein Odysseus asks his crew to plug their ears with wax and tie him to the mast, so he could hear the songs of the sirens.  Goldstein says that it is better to develop our own self-control than to create these empediments for our future selves do not do what the present self wants.

i would have to agree with him.  There is no reason to punish the future self for the actions of the self in a different time and place. Not only is it healthier to advance the present self with an affluence of discipline, but, as Noah Levine talks about in his book, "The Heart of the Revolution", when we beat ourselves up for some wrong-doing, we are only exasperating a pre-existent  pain.  In other words, we have caused ourselves pain, and then we feel bad about doing that, and so we feel twice as bad as we should. Rather than doing that, we should - of course, first and foremost, work on our self control, but also - learn to accept out own defeats, and ponder them, learn from them, and pointedly grow from them.  Do not create pain for yourself by punishing deeds, but learn that you will be doing yourself a disservice by repeating such behaviours, and let that be enough to disuade your present self.