What to Do with the Good Old Days

"If you think about the future, your future will be better. If you think about the past, your future will be worse."
(from my tweets, 2014)

Most of my tweets back then pointed forward. I wrote that the good old days were overrated, that the time is now and it will be even better tomorrow, and that whatever amazing things happened in the past would be even more amazing in the future.

But a few days after the tweet above, I wrote something that pulled the other way: "Part of me has nostalgia to before I became successful because that was when I had the most friends."

So which is it? Is looking back a trap, or something worth keeping? The research says it depends a lot on how you look back.

Not all past-thinking is the same

Psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd spent years studying what they called time perspective, the habits we have in how we think about past, present and future. In 1999 they published a questionnaire that measures several of these orientations.

Two of them are about the past, and they behave very differently:

• Past-negative: dwelling on regrets, failures and painful memories. People high on this score tended to report more depression and anxiety and lower self-esteem.
• Past-positive: a warm, affectionate view of earlier times. People high on this score tended to report more happiness and better relationships.

A future orientation, meanwhile, was linked to conscientiousness and pursuing goals.

So my old tweet was half right. Thinking about the future helps you plan and work toward things. Brooding on the past, replaying mistakes and losses, really does seem to drag people down. But warm memories are a different story.

Nostalgia is good for you

For a long time, nostalgia was treated almost like an illness. The word was coined by a Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer, in 1688 to describe a kind of homesickness. But over the last twenty years, researchers led by Constantine Sedikides and Tim Wildschut at the University of Southampton have found that nostalgia is mostly a positive, useful emotion.

In a 2006 set of studies, they found that nostalgic memories usually star the self surrounded by close others, often at important moments. They tend to be bittersweet, but mostly sweet. And bringing such memories to mind raised people's mood, their self-regard, and especially their feeling of being loved and connected.

That fits my nostalgic tweet. The reason I gave for it was not my old career. It was the friends I had back then.

Nostalgia helps when life feels lonely or empty

Nostalgia also seems to show up when we need it. In a 2008 study, Xinyue Zhou and colleagues found that people who felt lonely turned to nostalgia more, and that nostalgia in turn boosted their sense of social support. Nostalgia works a bit like an emotional reserve: when the present feels thin, the past reminds us that we are capable of connection.

In 2011, Clay Routledge and colleagues found that nostalgia also helps people feel that life is meaningful. After recalling a nostalgic memory, people reported more meaning in life and coped better with reminders of meaninglessness.

What the philosophers said

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his journals in 1843 that life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. That sentence holds both of my old tweets at once. Looking back is how we make sense of who we are. Looking forward is where we actually have to live.

Long before him, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything flows. As Plato reports it, you cannot step into the same river twice. The past can't be returned to, and that is exactly why it can be loved without being clung to.

Some honest caveats

Most nostalgia research uses short lab tasks, often with students, and measures how people feel immediately afterward. Too much nostalgia may not always help. Some studies suggest that people who are anxious or who habitually worry can feel worse after nostalgic reflection, especially if it turns into comparing a golden past with a disappointing present. The time-perspective findings are correlational, so they show which habits go with happiness, not that changing them will cause it.

Still, the pattern is clear enough to be useful: brooding hurts, warm remembering helps, and looking forward keeps us moving.

How to use the past well

• Notice the difference. When you think about the past, ask yourself whether you are brooding or remembering warmly.
• Revisit good memories on purpose. Look through old photos or tell a favorite story with someone who was there.
• Look for the people. Nostalgia is mostly about connection. If you miss someone, reach out.
• Let the past fuel the future. Use warm memories as evidence of what you're capable of, not as proof that the best is behind you.
• Don't compare. The past is not a competitor to the present. It's a resource.

Today's reflection

What is a memory that still makes you smile? Who is in it? And is there someone from that time you could get back in touch with this week?

Sources

• Kierkegaard, S. (1843). Journals and Papers, entry IV A 164.
• Plato. Cratylus, 402a.
• Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Hart, C. M., Juhl, J., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Schlotz, W. (2011). The past makes the present meaningful: Nostalgia as an existential resource. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(3), 638–652.
• Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 975–993.
• Zhou, X., Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., & Gao, D.-G. (2008). Counteracting loneliness: On the restorative function of nostalgia. Psychological Science, 19(10), 1023–1029.
• Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271–1288.