Anticipation vs Reality: Why Your Future Feelings Can’t Always Be Trusted

Thought For The Week

We tend to trust our feelings when making decisions — not just how we feel right now, but how we think we’re going to feel in the future.

The problem is, we’re not especially good at predicting that.

We consistently overestimate how intense things will feel.

How uncomfortable. How enjoyable. How satisfying.

But when the moment actually arrives, the experience is usually less profound than we imagined.

Which means a lot of our decisions aren’t actually based on reality, they’re based on slightly inaccurate forecasts.

This matters because bad forecasts can create bad habits.

If we expect something to feel overly difficult or uncomfortable, we’re more likely to avoid it, delay it, or keep putting it off. Not because it’s actually unbearable, but because we’ve already decided that it will be.

On the flip side, if we expect something to feel especially rewarding, uplifting, or comforting, we’re more likely to reach for it automatically and in excess. We chase the feeling we imagine it will give us, even when the reality is usually shorter-lived and less satisfying than expected.

This is where values can be more useful than emotions.

Our values help separate what feels appealing right now from what actually matters to us.

So instead of asking, What do I feel like right now?, we start asking:

What will matter after? What choice will I be glad I made later? What aligns with the kind of person I’m trying to be?

Exercise Tip

Earlier this week I was on holiday by the sea. Part of me wanted to go out for a run, but it was cold and raining, and the other part of me wanted to stay warm, dry, and just watch the ocean from the window.

Before a workout, it’s easy to imagine how difficult or uncomfortable it will feel. That prediction alone can be enough to delay it or skip it altogether.

We tend to overweight the initial friction of getting started and project that feeling across the entire session. We overestimate the effort required, judge each workout as if it’s our first, and forget how we felt after previous ones.

But once we actually get started, the experience is usually far less painful than anticipated. And by the end, we almost always feel better for having done it.

So I reminded myself why I’d wanted to go in the first place. A run on clean sand was a limited opportunity — next week I’d be back on muddy fields — and I could always keep it short.

I set off, and within five minutes I’d taken a diversion to make the run twice as long. Running on flat, compact sand felt easy. The cool sea air woke me up. By the time I got back, my head was clearer, my mood was better, and I felt far less stagnant.

Most training sessions don’t start with feeling energised. They start with showing up tired, busy, or not quite in the mood.

So instead of trying to predict the whole session, focus on starting. Ten minutes, one exercise, a short walk, just enough to get moving. Then pay attention to how you feel afterwards.

Because once reality replaces prediction, it becomes easier to choose differently next time.

Nutrition Tip

We often make choices based on how satisfying or enjoyable we expect something to be. A certain meal, snack, or treat gets built up in our mind — something to look forward to, something that will hit the spot.

But the reality doesn’t always match that expectation.

The first few bites might be enjoyable, but the experience tends to level off pretty quickly. And yet we keep going, chasing the feeling we thought we were going to get.

At the same time, foods we assume will be less satisfying often get written off too quickly.

We underestimate how enjoyable they can be, especially when we’re actually paying attention to the experience. A simple home-cooked meal, eaten slowly and without distraction, often ends up being more satisfying than we predicted.

So we end up in a similar pattern: we overvalue what we think will feel good in the moment, and undervalue what will actually leave us feeling better afterwards.

A useful shift is to slow things down and check in with the reality of the experience, rather than the expectation.

Is this as good as I thought it would be? Am I still enjoying it? How do I actually feel now?

That small pause is often enough to bring your decisions back in line with what you actually want, rather than how you expected it would feel.

Links & Resources

Article: This piece gives a nice, clear overview of affective forecasting: How we predict our future emotions, and why we often overestimate their intensity and duration. It’s a useful introduction to the biases that shape our decisions day to day.

Book: In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert shows how our imagination can distort our expectations of the future, leading us to misjudge what will feel good, what will feel difficult, and ultimately, how we make decisions.

Article: This piece in Psychology Today explores the “I’ll feel more like it tomorrow” belief, and why that prediction is usually wrong. It shows how procrastination is often driven by our current mood, not future reality, and why getting started is the most reliable way to shift it.

Inspirational Quote

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Seneca