We only remember a tiny part of what we live. The remembered happiness is related to the level of satisfaction with life. However, the satisfaction with life does not necessarily reflect that we are leading a happy life. In other words, we can remember happy moments, but that does not mean that we are happy.
In 2003, psychologist Daniel Kahneman conducted a very interesting experiment with profound implications for our happiness, the way we make decisions, and our life satisfaction.
He asked 682 people to indicate how much pain they experienced throughout a colonoscopy. The image below reflects the pain curve reported minute by minute by two patients. Which patient suffered the most?
Without a doubt, patient B’s colonoscopy was longer and more painful. However, when asked over time about the level of pain they had experienced, patient A recalled a more painful procedure. How is it possible?
Kahneman explains that we all have two “selves”: an “experiential self” that accompanies us every second and a “biographical self” that reconstructs our memories. The problem is that the “biographical self” ends up imposing itself on the “experiential self”, exercising an authentic tyranny that can lead us to make decisions that do not make us really happy.
Life, do we experience it or do we just remember it?
We all want to be happy. And we strive to achieve it. Every day we make decisions thinking that they will make us happy – or that they will at least bring us closer to that desired happiness. However, our “biographical self” sabotages us at every turn.
Take, for example, a two-week vacation. If we assume that going on vacation is usually a pleasant experience that makes us happy, we can conclude that a vacation twice longer should make us twice as happy. Ultimately, the times to experience happiness are doubled.
However, Kahneman explains that, from the point of view of our “biographical self,” a two-week vacation is not much better than a one-week vacation. Why? Simply because during the second week we do not add different moments, but we limit ourselves to living an achievement of the relaxing and happy experiences that we had already experienced the first week.
This means that our “biographical self” is quite limited. His attention and memory are quite limited. In fact, our memory usually registers what happens at the beginning and end of events, or registers an unexpected event in between, but it erases most of the experiences, which are the ones that constitute almost the entire experience, although those experiences are pleasant or even happy.
That’s the real reason Patient A found the colonoscopy more painful: he experienced the pain spike at the end. On the other hand, in the case of patient B, the pain decreased in intensity at the end of the test. That is why he remembers the experience as less painful. These people were victims of what is known as the recency effect; that is, the tendency to remember the endings.
The funny thing is that when making decisions and planning our lives, we do not choose between different experiences, but between the memories we have of similar experiences – which are extremely skewed – or between anticipated memories. In other words, our “experiential self” has no say in those decisions. However, it is the “self” that accompanies us continuously and on which our happiness really depends.
The tyranny of our inner biographer
Kahneman raises another dilemma: remember the best vacations of your life, would you choose the same vacations if you knew that afterwards all the photos would be destroyed and you would absolutely forget everything you have experienced?
This reflection leads us to another question with a more existential nuance: when we think about the ideal life, the one to which we aspire and that supposedly will make us happy, do we think about our experiences moment by moment or the narrative that we later weave in our memory?
In modern times, in which experiences have taken a back seat to give prominence to photos and videos, this phenomenon is exacerbated even more. The tendency to immortalize everything, instead of living it being fully present, gives more power to our “biographical self”. For that reason, more and more people go to a site just to take the proper photo or try an experience with the sole purpose of being able to tell it later.
The difficulty in planning our ideal life, that of every day that could really make us happy, lies in the fact that only the “biographer self”, the one who remembers the past and predicts the future, has a say in decisions, from the destination of our vacations to the work we do or the people we spend time with.
Of course, it is not a smart way of deciding. It is as if we were planning our life by turning it into a novel, where only the fragments that we perceive as important but which are actually a tiny fraction of our experiences, have a leading role in our consciousness.
What the “biographer self” remembers is satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the experience. Remember peaks of joy or pain. But happiness and well-being really come from the everyday flow of experiences. That is why it is necessary to make a distinction between:
1. The quality of life, as we experience it, moment by moment
2. The quality of life, as we remember it and is woven into the narrative of our mind
How to experience life, instead of just narrating it?
This tyranny of the “biographical self” condemns us to live to build memories that will be skewed. How to escape from that trap? Scott H.Young outlines some valid ideas:
1. Pay attention to the here and now
Our memory does not faithfully store memories, but chooses bits and pieces, those that considers most important. Memory is particularly susceptible to the recency effect (remembering the last thing that happened), the primacy effect (remembering what happened at the beginning), and the novelty effect (remembering the different and unexpected).
These memory biases erase much of the experience, which is largely due to our not paying enough attention to the present. When we live on autopilot, too engrossed in our future worries and past regrets, or paying inordinate attention to screens, it is normal for us to miss the present.
Therefore, to give more power to our “experiential self” it would be enough to pay more attention to what is happening here and now. Being fully present in the experience, instead of living it with our mind elsewhere. When we enter that state of flux, we can remember the experience as a single whole, rather than as flashes of novelty, which will help us to feel truly happier and more satisfied.
2. Make decisions with routine in mind
Nobody – or almost nobody – makes decisions thinking about the routine. We make decisions thinking about the fantastic moments that we will live. However, in terms of time, these fantastic moments are diluted in everyday life, which occupies a large part of our lives. Therefore, if we seek a stable level of happiness and life satisfaction, we must pay more attention to that daily life.
It is, therefore, about making decisions taking into account our lifestyle and the routine we carry each day, instead of thinking about unique events. In this way we give prominence to the “experiential self” and mitigate the tyranny of the “biographical self”.
The things we do every day can contribute positively to our well-being, to the point of being a thousand times more important than the magnificent and memorable events, but brief and punctual. Therefore, when planning our ideal life, we must also think about how our day to day will be and the satisfaction or happiness that it can bring us.
3. Choose a lifestyle, not a goal
“Life is a journey, not a destination,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. The problem is that we often forget that the person we become is more important while trying to reach a goal than the goal achievement itself.
When we set certain goals, especially those more ambitious, it is as if we put on blinders that keep us focused on our goal, but prevent us from enjoying the journey. We subordinated happiness to the achievement of those goals. We tell ourselves that we will be happy when we reach them. That is a big mistake.
It is not about erasing the goals, but about choosing them taking into account not only the final satisfaction – which is often much lower than expected and has a bittersweet taste – but the path that we must travel. If we want to escape the tyranny of our inner biographer, we need to focus more on the lifestyle we want to lead, rather than blind ourselves to goals.
Is it really worth making so many sacrifices to reach that goal? Is there a more pleasant path that can lead us to that same point? These are questions worth asking ourselves because if we become slaves to our goals and memories, we will be living for them, planning our biography, instead of living for ourselves.
Kahneman, D. et. Al. (2003) Memories of colonoscopy: a randomized trial. Pain; 104(1-2): 187-94.