Decisions Are Conversations With Your Future Self…
We tend to think most decisions are about now. About relief, comfort, beginnings, pleasure, escape, consuming, approval. But most decisions aren’t really for the present moment at all. They’re for the version of you that wakes up tomorrow. Or the one living with the consequences in a year. Or the one, years from now, who looks back and asks: Was that who I wanted to be? Why did I….? What was I thinking?
Decisions are time-delayed conversations with yourself.
The effort of a difficult decision or choice is usually short-lived. The early mornings. The awkward conversations. The discomfort of restraint, denial. The humility of choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. None of that lasts long. It passes. What often remains, though, is a steadier sense of self. A quieter mind. The knowledge that when it mattered, you didn’t abandon yourself. We took a temporary loss or denial in favour of a future safer sense of self.
The opposite pattern is just as familiar. The pleasure that promised relief but dissolved quickly. The shortcut that felt justified in the moment. The desire that seemed all consuming but left us empty. The indulgence framed as “I deserve this.” What’s left afterwards is rarely pleasure. It’s the story that follows. The rumination. The internal narration that starts to form: I’m someone who avoids. I’m someone who betrays my own standards. I’m someone who knew better and did it anyway. I can’t trust myself.
And stories stick.
We live with the meaning we assign to our choices far longer than we live with the sensations that motivated them. The impulse fades. The justification collapses. But the self-concept updates.
This matters even more if you are a reflective, introspective, ruminative person. Some people move on quickly. Others don’t. If you are someone who replays, analyses, revisits—someone who builds identity through narrative—you need to be especially careful about what you give your future self to work with.
Your mind will tell a story about what you did.
About what that says about you.
About what kind of person you are.
You may not be able to silence that narrator. But you can give it better material.
This isn’t about perfection. Or denial. Or never enjoying pleasure. It’s about noticing which pleasures cost you later, and which efforts pay you back over time. It’s about recognising that some desires ask for repayment with interest.
So before you act, it can be worth asking a simple, grounding question:
What would tomorrow me gently thank me for here?
Not applaud. Not celebrate. Just feel relieved about.
Or further out:
What story am I rehearsing for my future self?
One of integrity, effort, pride and self-respect?
Or one that requires a lot of explaining away?
You don’t live inside your decisions for very long.
But you live inside their meaning, their story, for years.
Choose accordingly.
As always, please remember that this is just a glimpse into a subject that’s much bigger than this page. We are here to help should you want to explore further your decision making, things that may be holding you back and ways to improve them.
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