Why we choose instant gratification

Quick gratification requires minimal effort, and with them we remain in the usual and safe comfort zone.

Secondly, it is a reduction of risks, because changes always entail additional costs.

And human nature binds most of mankind to circumstances, such as making a lot of money so as not to lose a roof over their heads. 

We choose food based solely on its taste qualities. It gives us brief moments of pleasure, but steals our lives with good health and energy.

We hold on to hateful jobs at companies that give us a supposedly stable income instead of pursuing goals and dreams that can bring fortune and the financial freedom we dream of.

Everything is hidden in our thinking structure. For our brain, wasting energy is a luxury it cannot afford. And our brain is a sweet tooth. The power consumption is only about 20 watts (like a dim electric light bulb), but that's probably the maximum it can consume without harming the body. If the brain produces more heat, this heat will damage the tissues. Therefore, the brain is constantly looking for "shortcuts" to save energy.

After all, if we review the strategy of life, we can easily change it for good, because mother evolution will not do bad)

There is another exercise that will help you overcome the emotions that have taken over your private space.

This is to start writing. A diary is a very useful thing in this regard. When you write, the rational part of the brain is activated, which, if it does not suppress emotions, will push them into the background.

The concept of "I" as a single integral entity that always decides everything by itself is an illusion created by our subconscious.

It seems to us that our mind is a complete entity that continuously and holistically processes information and is fully responsible for all our decisions.

The mind is more like a "community of minds" of different sub-modules, constantly competing with each other. Consciousness is like a storm raging in our brain.

The intuitive feeling that there is some controlling self that sits in the control center of the brain and sifts through information from the senses—pressing a muscle button—is an illusion, because consciousness is made up of a vortex of events scattered throughout the brain. 

But we have an evolutionary "wow" that gives us the opportunity to make a final decision in the prefrontal cortex. If animals are mostly guided by instincts, then humans make higher-level decisions by analyzing the information coming from the senses. This is the third level of consciousness.

Human consciousness is a special form of consciousness that creates a model of the world, and then predicts its development in time, evaluating the past to model the future. It requires coordination and evaluation of many feedback loops in order to make a decision and achieve some goal

Although we rely on instinct and emotion in many situations, we are also constantly analyzing and evaluating information from many feedback loops. That is, we model the future — sometimes beyond the limits of our own lifetime and even thousands of years ahead. We do this to weigh different possibilities and make the best decision to achieve some goal.

This can be illustrated by a simple experiment. David Eagleman describes what happens if you take a male stickleback and release a female into its territory. The male is confused: he wants to mate with the female, but at the same time he wants to defend his territory. As a result, he will attack the female and court her at the same time.

The male will go berserk, trying to both please the female and kill her

It illustrates a situation where a donkey has to choose between two equally interesting alternatives, and because of his inability to make a decision, he dies of hunger.

The plot of the paradox is as follows: imagine that a donkey stands between two stacks of hay equidistant from it, and both stacks have the same taste and quality. The donkey has a limited amount of time to choose because he is hungry and has limited resources. According to the theory that the donkey will make a decision based on reasoning, he should choose one of the sides, because in both cases he will get the same result.

However, the paradox of Buridan's donkey is that, in theory, the donkey has limited mental capacity and cannot make an informed decision because both alternatives are equally attractive. In the end, a donkey can starve without making a decision.

This story highlights the importance of decision-making and the ability to make informed choices in the face of constraints and conflict between alternatives.

The human brain perceives a huge stream of sensory and emotional information. However, the most important thing is to model the future by determining cause-and-effect relationships between events: that is, if A happens, then B happens.

But the neocortex uses more energy and calculates tasks longer than the animal and reptilian parts of our brain.

Therefore, in most cases we use automatic thinking, based on our habits, patterns and algorithms of automatic actions.

In other words, after many repetitions, our actions become automatic thanks to our subconscious, which helps not only to save time, but also to reduce stress.