Rosy retrospection
Rosy retrospection is remembering past events as more pleasant than they felt while you were living through them. Small annoyances fade from memory while the good moments remain.
In everyday life
Someone remembers a camping trip as magical, forgetting the rain, mosquitoes and arguments that made them miserable at the time.
You tell your kids your college years were the best of your life, though your old diary is full of complaints about stress, money and loneliness.
Why your mind does this
Imagining the past and the future is hard, so the brain uses the present as a template. Assuming things will stay roughly as they are now is a quick and usually workable guide. Making sense of events after the fact also helps us learn lessons and feel in control.
Its family, in 30 seconds: Projecting ourselves
How to spot it
Ask whether your memory includes the boring and unpleasant parts of the experience.
How to counter it
Before repeating a past experience, list what was hard or annoying about it the first time.
Habits that catch it
- Write predictions down
A dated note beats memory, which tends to edit itself to match what happened.
Same family: Projecting ourselves
SourcesMitchell et al. (1997)·Wikipedia