How Bad Is Your Cognitive Dissonance?

All right, let's try this little experiment. Yeah, don't worry, that's not gonna be the intro.

Okay, so cognitive dissonance. Is there seriously another helicopter? It's a plane this time. What do you want me to do? Wait, the shelf is right next to me.

Today, we're talking about cognitive dissonance: what it is, why it's important, and how you can overcome it. How to deal with it in a more healthy way and, in doing so, make yourself a better version of yourself.

Cognitive dissonance is when you have one or more thoughts in your mind that conflict with each other. Say you're a smoker; you're probably thinking, "I smoke cigarettes," and you're also probably thinking, "Cigarettes are bad for me." People do this all the time. They have an activity that they do on a regular basis; they know they do it on a regular basis, and they also know it's not very good for them. Most smokers have these two thoughts in their mind. They both conflict with each other, but they smoke anyways. This causes cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is extremely uncomfortable. They've done studies that have shown that people who have a lot of cognitive dissonance going on, or in other words, they have a lot of conflicting beliefs going on, they actually hold tension in their bodies and are physically uncomfortable—not just mentally uncomfortable. They've also shown that people who exist in a state of cognitive dissonance will do whatever it takes to get out of that dissonance.

There are four different things that people do to get out of that dissonance.

Number one is to change their thoughts. They think to themselves, "Damn, I'm a smoker. I smoke," and also, "Damn, I'm a smoker and smoking's bad for me." So what they do is they change one of those thoughts in order to achieve cognitive harmony. An example of changing your thought in order to achieve harmony would be saying, "Smoking isn't really bad for me," or an even more extreme case would be, "I don't really smoke." Both are very unhealthy ways to deal with cognitive dissonance.

The next thing that people do is they change their behavior, and in my opinion, this is the most healthy way to deal with cognitive dissonance. If you actually believe that it is truly and objectively bad for you to smoke, then you should change your behavior and according to that, and stop smoking.

Another thing that people do to facilitate their cognitive dissonance is they add a thought. So they say, "Yeah, I smoke cigarettes. Yes, it's bad for me, but also other people smoke cigarettes too, and they're not dying yet, so it's totally fine."

And the fourth thing that people do is trivialization. They say to themselves, "Yeah, I smoke cigarettes. Yeah, it's bad for me, but I just don't really care."

Needless to say, number two, changing your behavior in accordance to what you really believe, is the only way to deal with cognitive dissonance. So I would say, find the things in your life that are causing cognitive dissonance—things that you're doing that you know are bad for you—and change your behaviors in alignment with what you truly believe.

Mentally and physically, you'll feel better; you'll be more confident, and you'll be more true to yourself.

That's all today. Thank you for watching! If you like this video, hit that like button. If you like videos like these in general, hit that subscribe button. I have a Facebook page down below that you should join because there are a whole bunch of people like you who like self-improvement. There, you can post your own self-improvement advice. If you have Facebook, it's a no-brainer. Link is in the description. Join the inner circle. Have a nice day!

At first, we gotta create a fox. Here's the snout, here's the tail, here's our beautiful, all-in-all very strong back legs. Sturdy.