Ep.106 – Anne Wilson – Making Long-Term Decisions Despite Roadblocks

Podcast

Jun 22

Written By

Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast |Google Podcast | Amazon Music | Spotify

Are you struggling to make decisions that will benefit your future self? Are you constantly prioritizing short-term gains over long-term success?

Anne Wilson is a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and part of Laurier's Social Psychology program. Anne is fascinated by how people behave, think, and understand themselves and their social worlds, especially regarding how people make decisions.

During our conversation, we explore the science behind motivation and decision-making for our long-term selves. We examine the concept of temporal discounting and how to combat it by making our future selves feel closer to our present selves.

Anne also points out how to balance the need for distance and reflection to cope with trauma and negative experiences. Our memories and perception of time are malleable, and we discuss how to use this to our advantage to shift our mindset and accomplish our goals.

We also discuss strategies for parents to support their children's growth mindset and handling failures.

Three takeaways

We tend to value immediate rewards more than distant ones, making prioritizing long-term goals hard. However, there are ways to combat this by making our future selves feel closer to our present selves.

Our memories of the past are malleable and can impact our current sense of identity, but this flexibility allows for creativity and flexibility in future planning.

Kids learn from how we react to their successes and failures, and we should help them develop a growth mindset and embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Please enjoy my conversation with Anne Wilson.