in this video you're going to learn about
cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when we have a gap between what we believe is right
and what we're doing. That creates dissonance in our lives. This means that we believe one
thing but we're acting on something else. Dissonance feels like having one foot on one
boat and the other foot on another boat. As the two boats, as our actions and our beliefs drift
further apart, the more uncomfortable we get. When we have unresolved gaps between our thoughts
and our actions, we feel intensely uncomfortable. You can do all the coping and the meditation
and the self-care that you can handle, but if you can't figure out cognitive
dissonance you're just not gonna feel good. There is no substitute for integrity when it comes
to peace of mind. So for example, Jenny knows that she should exercise more. It's not that she's
obese or anything, but her body feels slow and sluggish, and she gets out of breath when she's
walking up a flight of stairs. She knows that she would feel better if she worked out, and
each day that she doesn't exercise she feels a tinge of disappointment and guilt. Now dissonance
makes us feel bad. Dissonance makes us feel unsettled or guilty or uncertain. Dissonance
makes us feel fake or bad about ourselves. And this feeling isn't just in our minds; it
creates measurable physical tension. And this isn't a bad thing, right? Discomfort can help us
be motivated to change. This is strongest when it has to do with a belief about ourselves. So for
example, the thought, you know, I value kindness, paired with the action "Oh, I just punched someone
in the face" is gonna bring on some pretty strong feelings of regret and guilt and disappointment.
When we resolve dissonance, we can feel more peace, we can like ourselves more, and we can feel
clarity. The opposite of dissonance is integrity. Integrity is not just about being honest with
our words; integrity means that we line up our actions with our values. And in my opinion,
integrity is the path to positive self-worth, to more peaceful emotions and a successful
purposeful life. Integrity is all about closing the gap between what we think and how we
act. Resolving cognitive dissonance is essential to living a life of purpose, meaning joy and
growth. So if you want to get better at feeling and if you want to feel peaceful, then you need
to learn what to do with those gaps in your life. Go ahead and write about one area in your
life where your actions don't line up with your beliefs or your values. How does this affect
you? How do you feel about yourself in regards to it? It's essential to acknowledge and resolve
these conflicts as much as possible. When they're left to just simmer, it leaves us feeling false
and helpless and insecure. Dissonance leaves us feeling uncomfortable and false, and integrity can
lead to us feeling secure and capable and whole. Now there are three ways to resolve dissonance,
but not all are equal. So the first one is to change our behavior to line up with our values.
So whenever our values are positive and helpful, changing our behavior is usually the best way to
close the gap. So let's explore what this would look like with Jenny, right. it sounds so simple,
but if she were to start finding a way to exercise a little bit each day, her feeling of dissonance
would be replaced by a feeling of pride. That seems basic enough, right? When we change
our behaviors to line up with our values, the dissonance goes away. This works great
when our values are positive and helpful, the kind of person we want to be. You don't have
to be perfect to be moving in a good direction. What matters most is that you're putting an effort
to live the way that you think you should be. Okay, the second way to close this gap is
to change our thinking to line up with our behavior. So sometimes our emotions are built on
faulty beliefs, um we need to change how we think, right? In that case we need to change our thinking
to line up with our values and our behaviors instead of trying to change our actions to try
and reach some impossible goal. So this is common with perfectionism or all-or-nothing thinking or
with impossible expectations. So if you remember with the example, Jenny thinks
she needs to exercise more, right? And she's not doing it. So in the
previous way of solving that problem, she exercised more and then she felt better. Now
what if Jenny actually has an eating disorder and she's already exercising three to four hours
a day, but she "knows" that this isn't enough. She thinks, "Oh, if I only worked out more, I
would like myself." She she beats herself up. She says, you know, "Why am I so lazy?" Right. So in
this case, her distorted thinking has led to these unrealistic standards for herself that aren't
healthy. So what does she need to do to resolve her feelings of inadequacy? She thinks she needs
to work out more, but she can't, so she feels bad, right? She needs to change her thinking to line
up with reality. She needs to place more value on health and moderation and improve her sense of
self-worth and let go of these perfectionistic ideals that are keeping her sick and making her
miserable. So when she changes her thinking to line up with a healthier set of behaviors like,
you know, exercising less than an hour every day, then she can feel more peace with her thoughts and
actions. So that's that's the second way to close that gap, as we change how we think to line up
with our values. Now the third way to close this gap is the worst option for trying to resolve
gaps, right. It is justifying our behavior. So justifying attempts to resolve this feeling of
dissonance by numbing, blaming, avoiding, or just excusing the fact that we have a gap, right. So
going back to the standing on two boats analogy, as the two boats separate, your legs begin to
stretch apart and weaken, and it becomes painful and harder to stand. But instead of climbing
aboard one boat to relieve the pain or pulling the two boats together, you just keep taking Tylenol,
right? You just pop a bunch of painkillers. This is what justification does. Your problem isn't
solved, but at least it doesn't hurt as much. Now this is obviously a bad situation. But despite
the harm that justifying causes, research shows that it's the most common way people do respond
when they've done something wrong. Most of the time, people change what they believe to fit their
behaviors instead of the other way around. So they say things like "Oh, no one will know. Everyone
does it. It's not that bad. Uh she's worse than I am. I'm not a bad person." Or they'll justify like
"Oh, I only stole this because I needed it more." This is all justification. It's all when you know
in your heart that what you're doing is wrong and you make excuses so that you don't feel bad
about it. Never ignore that guilty feeling. Don't just avoid it or try to make it go away. Take
time for introspection. Take time to clarify what you really believe you should be doing. It's
it's easy for us to just try and make ourselves feel good, but in the long run that makes us
feel miserable. So if you want to get good at processing emotions, you need to learn to notice
the signs of rationalization and justification. So going back to Jenny, Jenny values health.
She believes she should take care of her body, um but she's not working out. So if she were
justifying her behavior, she might start thinking "Well, I just don't have time to exercise." Or she
might get even meaner - justification is nasty, right? She might say something like "Well,
at least I'm not as fat as my sister." Or she might say something like "It's not my
fault that I'm overweight; it's my genes." And she would use these as an excuse to quiet the
guilt that she feels about not living her values. Now any of those statements could be true, right?
It might be genetic that she is overweight, right? But she only needed that as an
excuse when she was justifying. So clarifying what you really value and what's
helpful for you is really quite different than justifying, which is trying not to feel bad when
you have a gap. Okay guys, I have to interrupt, because when I was making this video I was
just really focused on the idea of cognitive dissonance, and I maybe should have chosen an
example that wasn't such a loaded topic. So I just want to clear things up. Your worth is
not dependent on your size or your appearance. You can be healthy at many sizes. You don't
have to lose weight or change anything about yourself to live with congruence. You don't
have to look a certain way or weigh a certain number of pounds to be a good person, right? Your
body is an instrument to do good in the world, not an ornament to be objectified. Now that being
said, the truth is that with anything you value, some real obstacles may come up, obstacles that
you can't do anything about. So this could be genetics or it could be racism or sexism or, you
know, whatever outside circumstances that you can't control. Honoring your values and resolving
dissonance is really about being intentional instead of reactive. So it's like you lay out your
values and your desires and your obstacles on the table, and then you choose what you're going to
act on. So you may say "I'm going to choose to exercise even though I'm genetically predisposed
to be bigger - I value exercise anyways." Or you may look at all these parts of your life, and
you may say "I value health, but for me I value reading more" or "I value spending more time
with my friends, and the obstacles to exercising aren't worth it to me, so I'm going to choose
to spend time with my family and friends instead of fighting my biology." Either way, whether you
choose to exercise or you choose not to exercise, that cognitive dissonance can be resolved because
you make a choice instead of just feeling like you should be doing something that you're not
doing. Resolving cognitive dissonance is about being honest with yourself about the choices you
make. So I just I just want to be really clear: even though I use this example of
someone who wants to become healthier, your worth is not dependent on your weight. You
don't need to exercise to be a good person. It's really all about choosing what you value, where
you're going to put your energy. So anyway, so I hope that clears things up. And let's get back to
the video. Now saying "Oh, at least I'm not as fat as my sister," that sounds mean, right? But that's
because justifying is mean. It's a dirty lie that we use to cover up our own emotions, and we
secretly do it inside of our heads all the time. So Jenny really values being healthy, but when she
doesn't act in line with that value she feels bad. Each of these ways of justifying keep Jenny stuck
in the same loop of believing she should exercise, not exercising, and trying not to notice it or
feel bad about it. We all justify, but the less we do it, the better off we are. So let's talk
about some of these signs of justification and rationalization. These include blaming others,
comparing yourself to others to put them up or down, labeling yourself like "Oh, I'm a good
person even though I just stole that stuff from my employer; I'm a good worker." Or excusing yourself
"Oh, I just stole that stuff from my employer. I'm just a bad person; I can't help it. I'm just such
a bad person." That's justification. Excuses. So we usually don't need reasons when we know we're
doing the right thing. So for example, with Jenny, she potentially could have genes
that make her more overweight, but it would still like make sense that she
values exercise to stay healthy. So the only reason she needed to remind herself that her
genes were the way we, the way they were were to keep her from feeling bad about something she
knew she valued - she values exercise, right? I once heard a clinical psychologist whose
responsibility was to determine whether inmates were responsible for their crimes or not, right?
So basically he was evaluating them to see if they had the mental capacity to understand
guilt and to understand right and wrong. And he said that the way he could always
tell is if they excused their actions, if they had reasons and rationalizations for
why they committed the crime that they did. If they did, if they used a reason, a
rationalization, an excuse, or blame, that indicated that they did have a sense of
guilt, that they understood enough that what they did was wrong, that they needed to cover it
up. The inmates who were actually innocent due to, you know, an inability to understand
guilt, they didn't have any reasons or excuses for what they did - they just
did it. Another sign of justification is denial. There's also extreme statements, right?
Minimizing your problem, horriblizing others. And in this, you know, if you catch yourself
trying to convince others that you're right, that's another sign of justification. Holding
different standards for yourself than others. All of these things, all this justifying usually
leads to suffering. This is the type of mental purgatory that often shows up as shoulds, right?
"Well, I should be exercising more, but I just don't have the time." Or "I should be kinder, but
he is such a jerk." Shoulds are one way we create our own suffering. Keep an eye out for my upcoming
video on how to work with those shouldy feelings. When it comes to cognitive dissonance, it's
best to resolve it by really taking the time to clarify, notice what your values are. We're going
to spend time on that in an upcoming video. Notice what your thoughts and your behaviors are. Write
about them. Don't allow yourself to make excuses. And choose whether you need to change your
thoughts or change your behaviors to create more integrity in your life. I encourage you to take
a time regularly to do an inventory with yourself once a week or once a day or once a month, and
take a look at your life and just check in and ask yourself "Am I being the person I believe I should
be?" And if not, try to be one percent better each day. This is all about striving for integrity,
working hard to have your actions line up with the kind of person that you want to be. Integrity
is the source of self-respect, and, in my opinion, it's essential for fighting depression and
anxiety. But nobody's perfect, right? I mess up all the time. We all have these gaps. It's what we
do with these gaps that matters for me. This gap, the gap between what is right and what I do,
as much as I try to bring my life in line and I work hard to improve myself each day, the only way
for me to actively accept the reality that I have this gap is through the grace of God and trying
hard every day to be humble, be willing to change myself and to be brutally honest with myself as
much as possible. As you work to clarify your cognitive dissonance, as you work to understand
your values and the kind of person you want to be and bring your action and your values in line with
each other, you're going to find greater peace and greater happiness. And as you stop justifying as
much, you're going to have better relationships. Thank you for watching, and take care. This
video is one skill from my 30-skill course, How to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the
most essential skills for resolving depression, anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion
processing is an essential skill for working through intense emotions, but most people have
never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every single main video lesson on YouTube for the world
to access for free. You watching these videos, sharing them, contributing to my Patreon
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