Escape Your State Of Dissonance (How To Break Free From Unconsciousness Behavior)

I’ve always felt the need to work more than I should.

I work to the point it causes harm.

It’s detrimental to:

• My physical health

• My mental health

• My relationships with family and friends

• My creative ability

Everything above plus more, yet I still justify overworking.

“I’m sacrificing now, so I can have a better future”, I tell myself.

You know the worst part?

I don’t even stop there.

I’ll tell a friend “Sorry, I can’t make that trip because something work related might come up.”

I find it impressive the false narrative I will tell myself so that I’m not misaligned with my values.

I became aware of this. (The first step towards changing behavior.)

I learned it’s fancy scientific term, “Cognitive Dissonance”:

“Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort a person feels when their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs.”

This graphic shows how this works:

Your action goes way off course from what you believe to be true.

Then you justify the action to have a half-good attempt at correcting that mental misalignment. In your mind, you are back in alignment with your beliefs and values (you aren’t, but you think you are).

This is why people justify their actions, to numb the discomfort they feel.

Justifying our false narratives.

The justification is the second part of the sentence we tell ourselves.

For example when I say:

“I’m sacrificing now, so I can have a better future.”

The, “so I can have a better future” is my justification for overworking.

What I find interesting is what “justify” actually means by definition:

“Justify : to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable”.

So if you do something you innately believe to be wrong and justify it, you are telling yourself that what you did is right, just, & reasonable.

Can you imagine how doing this on a regular basis without being conscious of it, could be harmful over time?

If I was to continue working far more than I should with no balance.

I see this taking me a few places:

1. Having money, but not fulfilling relationships.

2. Having money, but not freedom (”enjoying” my $$ trapped in a prison of my own making).

3. Having money, but not happy and fulfilled with myself

This can also happen with our view-of-self or worldview:

• “I shouldn’t exercise too much because I might get injured.” (You will get injured if you aren’t in shape.)

• “I should go to college because everyone is telling me to.” (College is great for people with a clear path, but isn’t the right road for everyone.)

• “I am safe and secure in a 9-5 job.” (Until a good co-worker gets laid off or fired.)

People who have cognitive dissonance will seek out information that specifically confirms what they believe to be true. Refusing to take a more holistic view.

Cognitive dissonance can even influence how people feel about and view themselves.

This makes it dangerously important to be aware of, or your self-esteem (the confidence you have in your own abilities) could suffer.

Change in our life often happens mentally. It can be as simple as a shift in perspective, taking a more holistic point-of-view, or becoming aware of something.

It is important we have awareness of our actions and how they impact us, our goals, & others around us.

Whatever those actions are, we have to take responsibility for them so we can live in a state of freedom. Not blaming everything negative that happens on someone or something else.

Jean-Paul Sartre puts it this way, "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“Condemned to be free”, every action we take is like raising a tiny flag voting for the person we want to be in the future. And when our head hits the pillow at the end of the day, we are responsible for whatever we put out into the world.

If you have cognitive dissonance and are effectively “unaware”, that’s dangerous.

Justification’s used are often stupid (to put it plainly).

For example:

“I deserve this ice cream because I worked out hard today.”

Do you deserve it?

Is it helping you achieve your goals?

No matter how you spin it, ice cream isn’t healthy.

It also sounds extremely goofy for me to say, “I can’t go on vacation because I might have work.”

No I won’t.

Nothing is going to come up that I can’t go on a trip for, it’s all in my head and I’m justifying.

So how can we overcome this?

I put together a simple framework:

Here are the steps (as shown above):

• Action -Behavior.

• Aware - Notice yourself being out of alignment from your goals, beliefs, & ideal self.

• Note - Write it down (keep a note on your phone where you can track everything easily).

• Shift - The first 3 steps are useless without shifting your perspective and changing your behavior the next time the same scenario arises.

If you are thinking to yourself, “I’ll consider this later just not right now” or “I will change later”.

Could that be cognitive dissonance?

Question everything: “If I consider this now and apply this framework to my life, would that be in alignment with the person I want to become?”

If we don’t begin to question, how can we know?

Remember, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when we are out of alignment.

Imagine you go your entire life and you weren’t made aware of things that were detrimental to your personal growth, and holding you back from your goals.

That hurts.

The only way out is through, so focus on:

• Questioning habits and actions. (Do they serve you and your goals?)

• Becoming aware of how they affect you.

• Take notes.

• Shift your trajectory.

I wish you the absolute best in your journey from here.

If you enjoyed this letter you might enjoy my YouTube channel where I talk about these same topics (with different nuances). You can find that here:

Chat again next week.

Your “over-working” friend,

Zeke

P.S. You are cool. Keep learning, keep questioning, & keep applying what you learn.