Two Selves

Talking about 2 selves, this is that finding of psychology that amuses me the most. So what are these 2 selves? They are the 2 kinds of memories, where one is experiencing self and the other is the remembering self.

Most of the times it’s the remembering self that supersedes the experiencing self. For this, a very well example was given by my dad when we were en route Ahmedabad on the NH8. We had to stop by the toll plaza and there were many queues to our right and to our left. The queue to our immediate right was moving very fast and so was the queue to our left and we were stuck in our same position for around 10 minutes, that’s when my mom, irritated said,

“Why is it so that the line that we choose is always the slowest?”

to which my Dad’s reply was the explanation for 2 selves ~

“That’s not so! We complain when it happens to us and blame that it always happens to us only! But we tend to forget that in the previous times we were on the benefiting side. Didn’t you notice that in the last few tolls our chance didn’t take much time and we swiftly made our way out?”

He brilliantly summarised that we gave less weightage to the experiencing self when we were easily able to make out our way through those toll plazas, but the at the last toll, it was our remembering self at play, that made us whine about our luck.

This happens the most with me, you, everybody, when it’s always the red light on our side when on the 4 way and we start grumbling. But now you know how you should console your mind.

Distinguishing between the experiencing self and the remembering self can even save a crooked relationship. This is the main reason for broken marriages and divorces, couples tend to forget the happy times they had in the consideration of their last big fight.

This is cleverly applied by the politicians when in their entire tenure they won’t do any good but as the election approaches, all the good work starts overflowing at a go, because they know how to play with your psychology as you easily forget or can say, your experiencing self is lazy and the remembering self takes a lead over it. But now you know how to make a judgement.

In a good company with fair valuation and decent growth till now, a recent dip should not let you conclude that it’s a bad investment as it once gave you gains and as, there are chances of revival but in a distressed company a minor rise should not make you forget that it was this company that wiped off your wealth. (subjectivity applied)

The instances of 2-selves are countless and they are very well elaborated by Daniel Kahneman (Nobel prize winner for Economic Sciences) in his book “Thinking fast and slow” which you can check out for further knowledge.