The Delusion of Looking at Yourself of Yesterday

Sometimes, looking at myself yesterday, I want to urgently change something in myself today. I read a note from two years ago and the first thought is “What kind of stupidity am I saying?” The second thought is “Why am I saying it this way and not that way?”.

But why does this happen?

We perceive ourselves as unchanged, although we are changing right this second. Change is a continuous process. Everything around us changes. We change too. I am today - not me yesterday¹. Looking at myself yesterday and “clutching my head”, you need to be glad that something has changed.

To see changes, you need to look into the past. Only then can we notice progress (or regression). Retrospective will help draw conclusions and adjust the path. Start documenting .

Here is what I write about this in the note Time - Degradation or Growth :

In general, the question of forcing and motivation is open. Should I do this or am I preventing myself from maturing and being reborn, from being renewed? Without renewal, I am degrading. A child cannot refuse to grow and mature. But with age, if we do not observe progress in retrospect, we do not develop. I wanted to write that time does not stand still and we must keep up, but does an oak tree or a leaf try to keep up? Are they even afraid of being late?

And here is what Winnie Lim writes :

Reading my past entries also allow me to understand the distance I’ve travelled between my past selves and my current self. Sometimes it feels like I’m still stuck in my old unhealthy patterns and reading my past entries enable me to see otherwise. Some things used to haunt me greatly and I feel ambivalent or amused about them now. I like that I can relive certain experiences because I took the effort to write them down, and understand how I relate to them now.