To Live for the Experience or the Memory
The Battle: Experiencing Self vs. Remembering Self
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Experiencing vs. Remembering Self:
Are we living for the moment or the memory?
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Quick Spin:
The difference between a moment we experience vs. the story we tell ourselves about it
Using the peak-end rule to evaluate decisions based on reality, not stories of the reality
Deciding whether we are creating memories or designing them
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♟️ MY TURN:
People experience 20,000 “moments” in a waking day and upwards of 500 million moments in a 70-year life.
One of my moments happened March 1, 2019 when I took the subway from my UWS apartment to the Beacon Theater to see one of my favorite modern-day philosophers, Sam Harris, interview Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman is a psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is also the author of NY Times Bestseller Thinking Fast & Slow.
Our Two Selves
Kahneman and Harris talked about our “Remembering self vs. Experiencing self”…..more easily described as living life or thinking about it. According to Kahneman we have two selves: the self that is experiencing something and only knows the present moment and the self that is recalling the memory of it. Our remembering self is a storyteller – weaving moments together and connecting an emotion to it.
So which is the source of truth? The way we feel when we experience something in the moment or the way we remember it?
Your Emotional Control Room
Pixar’s Inside Out helped me raise my children. Hands down. It also had a clever way of illustrating how our experience of the past can be colored by our emotions. The character Sadness can turn memory balls blue just by touching them, forever giving (tainting?) them with a sad or negative emotional charge. It’s not to say the experience itself was bad, but when Sadness gets to it, she changes how it is remembered.
To illustrate this further — Google Photos recently showed me a highlight reel from 2020 (candidly the hardest year of my life as a newly divorced single mom of 3 toddlers in the middle of a pandemic raising two rounds of VC capital for my ecom business). Yet the smiling blonde in the photos of long nature hikes with tiny humans, zoom homeschooling and eating picnics in parking lots stirred up fondness and nostalgic yearnings of a time where life slowed down. But in the moment I was holding on by a thread.
The Peak/End Rule
It turns out we can manipulate the remembering self. (Proceed with caution ⛔️)
In 1993 Kahneman ran a study…..people were exposed to two episodes of ice water. In the 'short' episode, they held a hand in water at 14°C for 60 seconds, experiencing substantial pain. The 'long' episode lasted 90 seconds. The first 60 seconds were identical to the short episode; but over the final 30 seconds the temperature was increased to 15°C, still bad but not as bad. Participants rated the 90 seconds of ice water exposure less painful than those exposed to 60 seconds of nearly equally cold water because the 90 seconds ended with exposure to a “warmer” stimulus.
This is called the peak-end rule. For the experiencing self – the long trial sucked more. For the remembering self, however, the peak-end rule implies that the added period of diminishing pain makes the memory of the long trial more tolerable.
Another less painful example: Ever have shitty service at a restaurant but then they bring out a free dessert? This is peak-end rule in full effect. You will leave on a sugar high and happy and likely forget the duration of bad service.
TL;DR
It turns out we don’t take a mental average of an experience (whether enjoyable or painful). Our minds are swayed by the peak and end levels. It makes evolutionary sense. We tend to remember the dangers and rewards of life rather than the familiar. This is why unchanging environments tend to make our memory blur.
So if you are currently evaluating a job or a relationship – be aware of the peak/end rule when making a decision. Be careful not to judge based on the peaks or the most recent experiences.
Or if time feels to be blurring by…..slow it down by seeking out a peak via travel or a new experience.
Feeling out of Alignment?
In a world of personal branding and social media – we can feel out of alignment scrolling through past pics and seeing one “story” of our life that our remembering self is telling while experiencing a very different version.
When this happens….stop and acknowledge the war of your two selves and who is at the reigns in your emotional control room.
♟️ YOUR TURN: To Live Life or Remember It…
If you were able to have a million dollar party with all your friends and family but never remember it – no memories - no pics on IG ORRRRR have a regular night out with your best friends with all the pics and memories…….which would you choose?
This scenario also presents an interesting question – in a world of content creators - are we capturing actual memories or are we purposefully designing them?
🧩 Life’s A Game Newsletter | 2x Founder + 3x CMO + 3x Mom + Building 3 companies | Prev @EY_US @theknot @house__of__Wise | 📚First book coming 2025