Changing Course
In a month’s time many of us will be actively pursuing a New Year’s resolution. These commitments tend to form around our areas of perceived weakness, so we resolve to lose weight, stop smoking, eat healthier, and do other self-improving activities, often choosing to approach these goals with an unsustainable fervor that dissipates before March. Rinse and repeat, annually.
Maybe you’re the exception. We hope you are. But we can’t help thinking what is it about a new year that makes us so goal oriented? Why don’t we pick up these habits mid-year? Why the January obsession with change?
We think it’s something akin to the nerdy excitement one may feel as they open a new notebook or sketchbook to that first, crisp, blank page. It’s the potential for a reimagined self, to create something new. We’re going to become our ultimate selves and the path in front of us is uncluttered, swept clean of the debris of the previous year.
But, before the year’s goal setting extravaganza begins, take some time to watch this clever TED talk by Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert. It’s an entertaining six minutes.
Despite being recorded in 2014, the “end of history illusion” he describes holds true today. It, very simply put, means that we think we think we won’t change much from the person we are today and even if we anticipate some change, we dramatically underestimate how much there will be.
At any given moment, we believe our current desires are stable because we’ve already become the fullest version of ourselves, and all past iterations were simply a crescendo to this person that currently occupies your brain.
It’s false, of course, and Dr. Gilbert proves it in several interesting ways. Try this thought experiment, directly pilfered from the TED talk:
Think of your current favorite musician.
Ask yourself how much you would pay to see that musician in concert, 10 years from now.
Think back 10 years. Who was your favorite musician then?
How much would you pay for a ticket to their concert now?
On average, Gilbert says the answer to question two is $129, and the answer to number four is only $89. “In a perfectly logical world”, he says, “these numbers should be equal.” The point?
Because we doubt future changes in ourselves, we overestimate the longevity of our desires and preferences. That can make decision-making, vision creating, and goal setting difficult tasks. We, as Dr. Gilbert points out, are great at remembering, but bad at imagining.
When you work with The Advocates, we orient your money toward your vision, eschewing traditional advice that would reverse this order of operations. If what Dr. Gilbert says is true in the majority, ten years from now you may not like your vision.
Our advice? Change it, then. It’s ok to re-dream and re-draw where and who you want to be and how you want to live. Our job is to help you adapt your plan to your values whether or not they shift from their current position.
Your advisor will work with you to change goals and objectives as needed to suit your new vision of the future. You need only to be honest about your desires when you chat with them. That’s part of our commitment to helping you live your values.