Our Powerful Simulator
Along thousands of years, human’s brain has evolved developing a new structure called prefrontal cortex. This area does lots of things, but the most important function is to be an experience simulator. Human beings have this marvelous adaptation so we can actually have experiences in our heads before they happen in real life. This is a trick that none of our ancestors could do, and that no other animal can do. This can for example help you to mix ingredients when you cook and imagine the taste that meal will have, or you can imagine how your date will go tomorrow before it happens.
Sometimes though, our brain makes wrong predictions overrating some of the scenarios over others which can lead us to make wrong decisions, either by excess of ambition or excess of fear. It’s reasonable to have preferences that lead us into one future over another, but when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. It works like this.
It was observed in multiple studies that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, etc, have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than people expect them to have. While we are constantly evaluating scenarios and evaluating our past decisions, we are at risk of not enjoying the present.
Remember!
Looking backwards: whether the decision we made was the best or we could have done a better choice is not so important, in any case, that is just an speculation of the brain because that other path doesn’t exist.
Looking forward: that future event (test, college, job, promotion, marriage…) that you perceive as a critical milestone in your life, is probably not that relevant. Most likely you will survive and will have equal chances of being happy in either one or the other scenario.
