If you were told there was a question that could predict your happiness and life satisfaction 10 years from now, would you dare to answer it? And I’m not talking about horoscopes, crystal balls, or personality tests from celebrity gossip magazines. It’s science.
Researchers at the University of California have discovered that your perception of your future self has a lot to do with your long-term happiness and well-being. The interesting thing is that it’s not about thinking big or cultivating a positive mindset. In fact, believing you’re going to change a lot… could be a bad sign.
The experiment: your self in a decade
Imagine for a moment that you have a magic mirror and can look at your “self” ten years from now. What do you see? Someone wiser, more energetic, calmer? Or maybe you see someone quite similar, with a few extra gray hairs?
That’s basically the premise of the study. Psychologists asked 4,963 participants to answer questions that predicted happiness, such as:
- How calm are you today? vs. How calm do you think you’ll be a decade from now?
- Do you think you will be wiser or more energetic in ten years?
- How much do you think your character and outlook on life will change?
The idea was to get people to project their personality into the future—not their achievements, but their essence. Researchers then analyzed how these self-expectations related to each person’s life satisfaction. And that’s where the surprise came in.
Those who believe that things will remain the same, gain in happiness
Against all odds, the results showed that people who believed they would change a lot in the next ten years, even in a positive way, ended up reporting lower life satisfaction.
In contrast, people who believed they would remain more or less the same were, on average, significantly happier with their lives years later. Therefore, feeling psychologically stable and connected to yourself has a positive impact on your well-being going forward.
Why does feeling “the same” make us happier?
In a culture that celebrates change and transformation, to the point of generating a genuine obsession with improvement, wanting to stay the same almost seems heretical. However, this continuist vision can be beneficial for several reasons.
- Change = uncertainty
Imagining that we’re going to change a lot, even for the better, triggers a feeling of insecurity and instability. Ultimately, change means ceasing to be who you are. And even if your current version isn’t perfect, it’s the one you know and know how to handle. Thinking that you’ll be very different can generate unconscious anxiety.
- Illusion of improvement = exhaustion
Steeped in a culture of perfection, it’s easy to put pressure on yourself to be your best version all the time. As a result, you feel like if you’re not constantly evolving, something’s wrong. This self-imposed pressure can be exhausting. If you believe your future self should be wiser, kinder, more productive… does that mean your current self isn’t up to par? This constant comparison ends up wearing you down psychologically.
- Stability = self-connection
Thinking that you’ll remain more or less the same can also imply that you know yourself well, that you trust your essence, and that you don’t need to “reinvent yourself” to feel valuable and worthy of being loved. This internal stability generates a kind of psychological grounding. And grounding, as long as it doesn’t turn into rigidity, is a great ally of happiness.
On the other hand, it has been proven that when we feel psychologically close to our future selves, we are able to postpone instant gratification, make better decisions, and even take better care of our health. Feeling more connected to that future selves encourages us to take care of ourselves today, so we’ll be well tomorrow.
So, I shouldn’t aspire to improve? Should I resign myself?
No, not at all. This study doesn’t promote stagnation, nor does it suggest that change is bad. In fact, its message is deeper: what matters isn’t whether you change or not, but how you relate to the idea of change.
If you live hoping to become a better version of yourself “someday,” you’re likely putting off your well-being. On the contrary, if you recognize the value of your current self and believe that you’ll maintain your essence 10 years from now—even as you grow and learn new things—you’ll be cultivating a stronger emotional foundation.
If you don’t feel connected to your future self, are you doomed to unhappiness?
Of course not! Imagining that you’ll be a different person in ten years can also be motivating. Just make sure you build an emotional bridge with the current version of yourself. You could, for example:
- Write a letter to your future self . This will reinforce the sense of continuity, especially by focusing on the qualities you’d like to maintain ten years from now.
- Visualize how you’ll feel . Don’t focus only on “achievements,” but on the emotional states you already value. Don’t imagine yourself on a big day of celebration, but rather on any ordinary day. What things are still present? What do you do the same? This will strengthen the sense of continuity.
- Set goals that connect what you love now with what you dream of for tomorrow . You don’t have to break away from everything, but rather carry the useful things from today into your future self. Remember, you don’t need to be someone completely different to value or love yourself.
In short, the important thing is to understand that future happiness doesn’t depend on becoming someone different, but on how comfortable you feel with who you are today. In an era where everything pushes us to “reinvent ourselves,” “be a new version,” or “make a 180-degree turn,” science offers us a different message: being happy in the future isn’t about changing everything, but about feeling connected to yourself over time.
Seeing your future self as an extension of yourself, with its lights and shadows, with constant qualities and new nuances, anchors you emotionally and offers you stability. And that might be enough to make you feel happy and fulfilled.
Source:
Reiff, J. S. et. Al. (2019) Identity Over Time: Perceived Similarity Between Selves Predicts Well-Being 10 Years Later. Social Psychological and Personality Science; 11(2): 160–167.
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