Luigui Bleand: The Wisdom of Not Attacking Your Future Self

ROME, ITALY — I can bear faithful witness that bad decisions can bring bad consequences. It is not something I know secondhand: I have stumbled many, many times and found myself in very different situations, some of them truly difficult. Of all bad decisions, the ones that weigh most afterwards are those that earn you many enemies. When tempers rise, it is better to be intelligent, seek agreement and not attack your future self, because the person who will live with what you decide today is you, a little further down the road. Attacking your future self is hitting yourself in advance. That is how I want to look at the decisions ahead: wisely, navigating life like an intelligent person, one who thinks before reacting.

I have seen it up close. Someone was very upset because something in his work had gone wrong, and he felt he could do nothing against someone far, far more powerful. So he started fighting with everyone in public. I gave him sound advice: instead of turning so many people into enemies, he should talk intelligently with the right people and seek an agreement. He took it as an offence. He answered me with harsh words; he even wrote to me in private.

Later I put it another way, this time in public: do you really want to fight someone with a hundred times your resources? He did not understand that either. And yet I understand him. Anger blinds, and when you are inside the problem, everything looks like a battle you have to win today, whatever it costs. Wisdom is also this: not taking the insult personally. Someone who is hurt is often speaking not to you, but to their own wound.

It was easy for me to see because the problem was not mine. In 2014, in Psychological Science, Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross studied this in three experiments with 693 people in the United States. They measured wise reasoning: recognising the limits of what you know, looking for a middle ground, considering other people’s perspectives and imagining how things might change. In the first, 104 University of Michigan students in a relationship imagined an infidelity by their own partner or by their best friend’s partner, and their reasoning was wiser in the friend’s case. They called it Solomon’s paradox, after the king famed for his counsel who, in his own life, lacked that same clarity: we reason more wisely about other people’s problems than about our own, in younger and older adults alike. When people thought about their own problem in the third person, using their own name, the difference disappeared in one experiment and almost disappeared in another. These were imagined situations, and the authors call for testing it with real problems.

So why can sound advice produce exactly the opposite effect? In 2004, in Marketing Science, Gavan Fitzsimons and Donald Lehmann ran four experiments with 438 students at the University of Pennsylvania. Each first formed a preference between products, such as granola bars or cars, and then received, without asking for it, a recommendation from an expert magazine. In the first, when the magazine strongly advised against the clearly better option, 92.9% chose it anyway; when it recommended it, 70.6% did. The authors link this to reactance: pushing back when we feel our freedom to decide is threatened. These were students, in small groups, minor decisions and advice from a magazine rather than a person, and they did not measure anger or offence: applying it to my story is an interpretation.

And here I come back to not attacking your future self. In 2011, in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Hal Hershfield brought together research showing that we often treat our future self as another person, even as a stranger, and the more of a stranger it seems, the less we act with it in mind. In 2012, in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, he, Taya Cohen and Leigh Thompson published six studies: those who felt less connected to the person they would be in ten years made more false promises and lied more. In the only experiment, 86 people wrote: some about the ways they would still be the same person ten years from now; others about what the world would be like by then. The first group approved less of inappropriate negotiation tactics. Thinking about the future was not enough: you had to picture yourself in it. The rest are associations, and the experiment was small.

Companies have a future self too, and this week a piece of entertainment news reminded me of it. On 6 October 2026, Skydance Corporation, until recently Paramount Skydance, completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The new company, named Skydance, brings together two major film studios; two global streaming services, which, the company says, will become one over time; television channels such as CBS and HBO; two news networks, CBS News and CNN; and live sports from CBS Sports and TNT Sports. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders received $31.01666668 per share in cash: $31 plus a small amount for each day after 30 September. David Ellison is Chairman and CEO, and Ynon Kreiz is Co-CEO. “Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry,” Ellison said.

The road was not straight. On 5 December 2025, Netflix had agreed to buy Warner Bros. and HBO for $27.75 per share in cash and stock; the cable networks, such as CNN, were to be spun off into a separate company. Three days later, Paramount Skydance answered with a rival offer for the whole company. On 26 February 2026, the Warner Bros. Discovery board deemed Paramount’s revised offer, of $31 per share in cash, superior. Netflix replied that same day that it would not raise its offer. Its co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, explained that they had always been disciplined: the purchase was desirable at the right price, not essential at any price. The merger agreement with Paramount is dated 27 February, and the deal closed after approval by shareholders and regulators.

According to the company, Skydance has more than 200 million streaming subscribers and nearly $70 billion in revenue, and promises at least 30 cinema releases a year, each with a minimum of 45 days in theatres. As an owner of intellectual property, this is my view: it was a very interesting transaction, and the industry is going to change. To me, there used to be two big players, Netflix and Prime Video; now there are three, with Skydance, which has brought Paramount and Warner Bros. together. As for the rest, we will see.

What this whole story teaches me most is how it ended. There were offers and counteroffers for months; in the end, Netflix chose not to chase the deal at any price, and Paramount and Warner Bros., two companies with more than a century of history each, decided to walk together. Even giants, after competing hard, end up sitting down to negotiate and reaching agreements. In a large company or in a life, wisdom looks much the same: choosing your battles, listening, talking intelligently with the right people and protecting your future self.

So before answering in anger, it is worth asking yourself two questions: what would I advise a friend in my place? And what will the person I will be in ten years think of this? Advice we do not like deserves one more hearing before we turn it down. The Bible tells us that Solomon, when he could have asked for anything, asked not for riches, or long life, or the life of his enemies, but for a heart that knew how to listen. That wisdom is something we ask of God and practise every day: not striking today the person we will be tomorrow.