Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance

"In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when they realize their cognitions and actions are inconsistent or contradictory. This may ultimately result in some change in their cognitions or actions to cause greater alignment between them so as to reduce this dissonance."

If you're familiar with The Big Lez Show then you may have heard this before.

I feel like I'm always on a path of penance.
Blaming other things for my doings, and then blaming myself for blaming other things.
Yet still, I always find myself going back to the same mindset of "I can do this thing because of this" which creates excuses.

Constantly, I'm reminding myself that my actions have consequences on things like
the trajectory of my life, other peoples lives, and how I perceive things. 
However, I feel that my actions are contradictory to my thoughts.

Whether that be me telling myself that I'm sleeping my life away and I should start
waking up earlier, but still refusing to go to bed at anytime before 3am,
or me telling myself I need to quit nicotine but just finding a different alternative to whatever
I'm doing now.


I realise now that sometimes if you're struggling to hold a promise to yourself, you have to
make the promise worth something. 

You may ask, "What do you mean by this?"

Well, that's up to you to decide. This could mean that you promise to sacrifice something, but 
if that sacrifice is for the greater good of yourself or people around you, the promise is worth more than the sacrifice.

If the promise is worth more than what you're promising against, you wont have the voices in the
back of your head telling you: "you can do it one last time" or "after this", or
"its okay because-". These thoughts are what's keeping you stagnant.

Stop beating yourself up, and start helping yourself out. This is what I/we should all be telling ourselves, but when does this ever come into your head? Never!
No one thinks this clear all the time.

So have a goal and a reward, even if the reward is the lack of something, embrace the fact that
you're doing it and can live the next day knowing that yesterday wasn't a waste of time.


Imagine you're climbing a massive staircase, you look up towards the top but it's so far away it'll
take yearrrrs to climb. That's scary right?
Now in a years time, what's scarier: looking up towards the goal closer than ever before, or looking back and being in the same place?

Now apply that metaphor to your life. That's scary right?

Let me be clear! Awareness of this subject alone is NOT enough! Action is what bridges the gap between thoughts and behaviours. This is partly the reason why I'm making this post, to force myself to think about it and take action. 

Self compassion. Too much of it and you start giving yourself free passes, too little and you beat yourself up. It's also the first step into breaking out of the loop of abuse to yourself.
This is SUPER hard for me and I'm sure for you as well, but remember that it's okay to struggle
- as long as you're trying to improve.

Progress. Lets go back to the staircase metaphor. Remember that progress, no matter how slow, is better than staying stuck in the same place.
One day? Or day one. Take the first step, even if its a small change in your lifestyle.
Align your actions with your thoughts, and use the discomfort of cognitive dissonance as motivation to evolve.


If you read all of this, you've already taken the first step.
Did this resonates with you? Take a minute to think about how your cognitions differ from
your actions. Does this create a sense of self-mortification?

Feel free to discuss this topic in the comments!