The End of History Illusion

I’ve been listening lately to Yale University’s Dr. Laurie Santos’ popular HAPPINESS LAB podcast. I highly recommend.

She mentioned a concept by Dr. Dan Gilbert (Author of Stumbling on Happiness, host of three popular TED talks, and Harvard Professor of Psychology) that I followed up on. It is called the “end of history illusion”.

Here is how it goes:

• When they ask 20 year-olds how much they think they will change in the NEXT ten years, most assume very little.
• Yet when they ask 30 year-olds how much they changed over the LAST ten years, it turns out that they actually changed a lot.
• This “mistake” (assuming we are fully formed when we’re not) is found at EVERY AGE.

Furthermore, it is true for virtually ALL types of change: values, personality, likes and dislikes (what your favorite type of activity or vacation will be, who your friends will be, etc). It is not just the minor stuff that changes – MAJOR stuff changes too.

The implications are massive:

We change MUCH MORE, and MUCH MORE FUNDAMENTALLY than we think do, and this continues for our entire lives.

We can – and will! – change. It is up to us to decide how.

We can become happier.

We can become better.