The Reason You Can't Save Money, According to Neuroscience

You are sabotaging someone right now — not yourself, someone else. Except it is you. Just later. And your brain has been treating that person like a stranger the entire time. In this video, you'll learn about a 2009 Stanford brain-imaging study that found people's neural activity when thinking about their future self looks statistically closer to how they think about a total stranger than how they think about themselves right now. You'll see the follow-up experiment where showing people a digitally aged photo of their own face changed how much money they were willing to save for retirement. And you'll learn about a study where writing a letter to your 20-year future self led to measurably more exercise than writing to your 3-month future self. This isn't a willpower problem. It's an identity problem, and once you see the mechanism, you can work with it instead of against it. If this changed how you think about your future self, hit like, drop a comment with what you're going to do differently, and subscribe for more research-backed breakdowns of how your mind actually works. #psychology #neuroscience #futureself #savingmoney #procrastination #behavioralpsychology #cognitivescience #temporaldiscounting #personalfinance #selfimprovement #mentalhealth #productivity #habits #mindundone #brainscience #humanbehavior #decisionmaking #financialpsychology #delayedgratification #retirementplanning #willpower #motivation #goalsetting #identitypsychology #fmri