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Who You Are Now Is NOT Who You’ll Always Be
A mindset trap I often fall into is thinking that if something is a certain way now, it’ll be this way forever. It’s probably a common human bias.
“If there’s a war raging now, there’ll be war forever. If I don’t have enough money to cover rent now, I’ll be broke all my life. If I have a job I hate now, I’ll be a failure until I die.” So on, so forth.
Of course, such pessimistic extrapolation — that is, assuming that a particular behavior will continue in the future indefinitely — is flawed. But we fall into the same trap even with things we like.
If we enjoy being a certain way — i.e., traveling the world, blogging, scuba diving, being digital nomads, not having kids, not marrying, not having a stable income, not having a full-time job now — we assume that this is who we are.
And this is not true.
Our identities are not fixed. We are one person this year, and the following year, we’re someone else. Don’t believe me? Just look back at your dreams and aspirations some five years ago. They probably seem ludicrous now.
(This is also why you shouldn’t get tattoos when you’re young. 99.9% of tattoos are ink regrets on a skin.)
The chances are that you’ll want to get married and have kids one day. You’ll want to settle…