We often go through life smoothing over unacceptable inconsistencies to make our minds comfortable . We feel really good when we have successfully deceived ourselves. Maintaining our emotional stability is much more important to us than sharpening up our perceptions of reality.
Too many of us live our lives in a fairy tale. We can see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and believe getting it is a stress-free journey because that's the illusion that was given to us. If you want to be successful and accomplish your goals, you have to be realistic about yourself, your goals and how you plan to achieve them. Anything is possible but life isn't a fairy tale. When you're making changes to move forward, you must adjust to people, places and things.
For more than 20 years, I struggled with being stuck and unable to move forward in life, even after years of being busy, going through the emotions and looking like I was making moves, However; I realized that life for me has been nothing more than a hamster on the wheel movement. I was an entrepreneur with multiple businesses, a successful marriage with children, a published author, community leader, and role model, From outside appearances, I appeared to be doing well. However; I was lying to myself that I was well, but secretly knew that I was barely scratching the surface because I was battling with an inner struggle and an emotional injury eventually diagnosed as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was lying to myself the whole time and in denial that I was well because I was still doing things in life, but I was only spinning my wheels and not completing anything. This is called Cognitive Dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance is conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors within a person. It's more comfortable to justify our bad choices because we like to see ourselves as improving in life. We justify our poor choices like; " I hate my job, and I know its bad for my emotional health, but its a paycheck."
Some Ways To Reduce Discomfort From Cognitive Dissonance)
1) Change your behavior or change your beliefs so they are consistent with each other.
2) Seek information that aligns with and supports current beliefs , reducing the conflicting beliefs importance, and changing beliefs to reduce the feelings.
3) Get better with boundaries
4) Stop making excuses for people that manipulate and harm you
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