"If the self or person of today, and that of tomorrow, are not the same, but only like persons, the person of today is really no more interested in what will befall(降临到……头上) the person of tomorrow, than in what will befall any other person," Joseph Butler, a well-known philosopher wrote in 1736.
The theory caught the attention of a researcher called Hal Hershfield, who suspected that a disconnection from our future selves might explain many unreasonable elements of human behaviour including our unwillingness to exercise often.
To find out, Hershfield first had to find a way to measure someone's "future self-continuity". He settled on a simple graphic that presented pairs of circles representing the current self, and a future self (see below). The circles overlapped(重叠) to varying degrees, and the participants had to identify which pair best described how similar and how connected they felt to a future self 10 years from now.
He then compared these responses to his participants' real-life behavior. Hershfield first looked at his participants' real-life savings and he found that the more the participant felt connected to their future self, the more money they had already squirrelled away. What's more, people who score highly on the future self-continuity measure have higher moral standards than the people who struggle to identify with their future selves.
Hershfield confirmed that someone's (in)ability to identify with their future self can have long-term consequences for their overall wellbeing and that our sense of connection to our future selves can be strengthened. You might consider a simple imaginative exercise in which you write a letter to yourself 20 years from now, describing what is most important for you now and your plans for the coming decades.
It might seem strange to start a "conversation" with an imagined person but once your future self becomes alive in your mind, you may find it much easier to make the small personal sacrifices(牺牲) that are essential to preserve your wellbeing.
