A pattern I’ve noticed in mylife:
- I notice that I’m doing something unaligned with my values.
- I experience a large amount of cognitive dissonance.
- I also experience decision paralysis due to thinking about sunk costs and any obstacles to changing my actions.
- One day, I finally decide to actually change my actions.
- Sometimes the change fails to take after a day / week.
- Sometimes the change sticks and is permanent.
I think it doesn’t have to be this way! The alternative is acting NOW. To be precise, I’m suggesting that I increase my reaction speed to cognitive dissonance.
A word of caution — cognitive distortions can feel similar to cognitive dissonance. So, a more precise formulation of my strategy is,
- When I notice some kind of persistent thought of “I’m doing something wrong”
- Evaluate whether this thought is accurate.
- If the thought is true, act now.
- If false, mark it as such and evict it from mind.