3 Keys to Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance

Happy Thursday, Friend!

Today at a glance:

The key to momentum in life is alignment. You need alignment between the vision you have for yourself and your life, your values, and your daily actions.

It’s impossible to feel fulfilled, motivated, or happy when there is a misalignment between these components.

Misalignment creates cognitive dissonance, and that is not fun.

These are my insights into how you can avoid this and make steady progress in your life with no more steps back.

Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

American psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term in the 1950’s.

It is the “mental conflict that occurs when your beliefs don’t align with your actions.”

When your beliefs don’t align with your actions, you start to question those beliefs. And when you begin questioning existential beliefs about your values and the type of person you are, you can lose your sense of identity.

In extreme cases, cognitive dissonance can lead to suicidal thoughts.

I’m no therapist, but I do (unfortunately) have some insights into dealing with cognitive dissonance.

The initial stages of my fitness journey were tinged with cognitive dissonance.

When I started getting into health, habits, and self-improvement, I created a belief about the type of person this made me and the actions this person should take.

So far, so good — it’s important to have a coherent sense of how our actions align with the ideal identity we’re striving to live up to. My problems arose when the actions of my ideal self became rigid and impossible to adhere to.

Yes — our actions need to line up with our beliefs and match the person we want to be, but we’re also human and imperfect. We require a degree of resiliency so that our imperfections don’t throw us into cognitive dissonance.

That resiliency was the missing part of my equation.

My perception of what it meant to be a “fitness person” became so rigid that eating out at a restaurant was enough to throw me into mild cognitive dissonance (I had picked up the idea that “fitness people” prepared their own food).

And if I had something with sugar or that was deep fried, or God forbid, an alcoholic beverage, the cognitive dissonance was profound.

It would send me into something I eloquently call Piece of Shit Mode.

POS Mode

POS mode is the response to cognitive dissonance from your subconscious.

It’s the reason why one cheat day turns into a cheat week, one skipped workout turns into a failed fitness plan, and why one night of procrastination turns into an unfinished project.

Piece of shit mode is your subconscious saying:

Piece of shit mode is when the cognitive dissonance from your actions not lining up with your ideal identity cause you to double down in the opposite direction.

My pattern looked like this:

I would be trucking along happily, putting in a solid effort at the gym, reading, meditating, and eating clean, nutrient-dense food.

Actions perfectly aligning with my desired identity. All is well in my universe.

Then an event would come up, maybe a friend's birthday or some gathering.

I’d go and have a beer. That’s a normal thing to do, right?

That might turn into two beers. That might turn into two beers and some pizza.

And now my subconscious is saying:

And then I would double down on being “that guy.”

These lapses would cause me to sleep in, procrastinate, make poor food choices, and even skip workouts. They could last for several days.

Writing about it makes it seem so stupid, and that’s because it is stupid. These cognitive dissonance-fueled lapses are irrational; they sound dumb as shit when viewed through a rational lens.

They’re emotional.

You need self-belief in the type of person you are to continue acting in alignment with that identity.

When that belief is called into question, you lose the motivation to act in alignment with your ideal self.

Your vision of the person you’re trying to become is muddied.

In my experience, it meant I’d become a piece of shit.

It was usually a hard workout that snapped me out of POS mode.

I would fade back into reality, and suddenly, I could access my values and sense of self. The sense of self I aspired to — the identity I was driven to manifest.

Mental health requires your actions to be coherent with your beliefs about yourself and the person you’re working on becoming.

Reflecting on what caused me to go into POS mode and how I snapped out of it has given me three key insights for mitigating cognitive dissonance and the ensuing lapse in habits.

Anchor Points - the POS Mode Vaccine

My first clue was noticing what would get me back on track — what caused me to fade back into reality, where I had a sense of purpose and excitement for my goals again.

A hard workout.

When I performed an action that reminded me of my ideal identity, I’d snap back.

Putting in 100% effort at the gym was an anchor for a healthy self-perception. It would crush my cognitive dissonance and get me back on track.

It lead me to come up develop what I call “anchor points.”

An “anchor point” is an action you do that instantly reminds you of your values and identity. They’re the key to resilience.

My lapses would arise when I did something that didn’t align well with my desired identity.

But complete avoidance isn’t the answer.

I didn’t want to have to be the person who had to say no to a piece of Pumpkin Pie on Thanksgiving.

The key was anchor points: daily actions to remind me of who I am and forge a resilient identity. An identity capable of navigating life’s events without losing itself.

How to use anchor points:

Pick several habits you can do every day to enforce the ideal version of yourself.

Examples could be:

• Journaling

• Meditating

• Breathwork

• Yoga

• Going for a walk

• A daily workout

• Drinking your daily smoothie

They should be easy and flexible because the key is that you will do them EVERY DAY.

I would always fall off my habits when I had these lapses. Don’t let this happen with anchor points. They’re best done early in the day so that you can get started on the rich track.

These habits anchor you to your identity.

I have a couple:

The most important is that I wake up immediately every morning when my alarm goes off.

I swear I have never had a productive day if I sleep in.

Next, I do a morning meeting with myself where I go over the plan for the day and for the next few weeks and months. This grounds me to my goals and identity.

I also do some intentional movement every day: most days this is a workout, but on rest days it’s a walk.

I’ve been working on adding breathwork to the mix too.

Use daily actions to anchor yourself to your identity, and hopefully, this helps you avoid POS mode so that you can make progress in your life while thriving as an imperfect and flawed human being.

Reframing

You reframe an action when you create conditions that help you see it in a different light.

Reframing helps you to reconcile activities that have the potential to seem incoherent and create cognitive dissonance.

One of my favorite examples is Dwayne Johnson.

Dwayne Johnson gets up at 4 am to train.

He’s the “hardest worker in the room” and has a brand deal with Under Armor to prove it.

He’s the highest-grossing Hollywood actor in history; he has a tequila company — you get the picture. He’s a driven, successful man.

He also has epic cheat days.

He’s famous for them.

I’m talking multiple cheeseburgers, cookies, brownies, pancakes, ice cream — the man doesn’t hold back.

Dwayne Johnson is on point with his diet most of the time. But on a “cheat day,” he lets loose.

I’m not suggesting everyone have a “cheat day,” but it’s a way to reframe eating unhealthy food in a way that makes it coherent with a health and fitness-focused identity.

I have a friend who has a habit of a “free lunch” with his wife, where they go to a restaurant and can order whatever they want one day a week and forget about calories, and that deep-fried food is unhealthy.

Learning how to track calories was a reframing for me — when I saw that I could eat a small bowl of frozen yogurt and still lose weight, tracking became a way for me to reframe eating these “unhealthy” foods because I was being structured and accountable.

There are infinite ways you can reframe something to help you not see it as a blight on your identity.

You can sleep in for an hour on Sunday.

Watch Netflix on Saturday evening.

Have one day a week that you have a glass of wine or a cigar.

When you limit and create structure around the behavior, you can frame it in a way that you don’t perceive it as incoherent.

Cold Turkey

If there is a behavior, habit, or activity that doesn’t align with your vision of who you want to be, and you can’t successfully reframe it, you may have to cut it out completely.

The author Gretchen Rubin has a concept of classifying people as moderators and abstainers.

Gretchen Rubin has said some ridiculous things about nutrition, and I’m not a huge fan and kind of hate to agree with her on this, but I can’t help it.

She’s on to something here.

A moderator is someone who has no issues regulating behavior. The best example of a moderator I can think of is my fiance, who once nibbled away at a single cookie for a whole week.

ONE COOKIE. How crazy is that?

I eventually ate the remaining half cookie because I couldn’t tolerate that nonsense in my house.

An abstainer, on the other hand, finds moderating challenging but has a much easier time simply saying no.

This dichotomy seems stupid if you view it as that an abstainer can’t say no to things or have “just one” cookie.

Everybody is capable of having a bit of chocolate or a single cookie.

It’s a preference.

An abstainer prefers saying no completely to trying to incorporate a small amount into their life.

If you’re an abstainer, you may have to go cold turkey on some behaviors that don’t align with your ideal identity. You’ll find this easier than trying to reframe it.

You’re not going to go through life perfectly nailing every workout, project, task, and item on your todo list.

You’re not going to stick to your diet perfectly.

You’re not going to avoid procrastinating on things completely.

But you can avoid letting these slipups get in your head and create cognitive dissonance.

Mitigate cognitive dissonance by creating anchor points — daily habits you do that enforce the best parts of your identity.

Reframe conflicting behavior in a way that you can stay grounded in your positive self-perception.

And if you can’t reframe something and integrate it into your life harmoniously with your identity, cut it out.

Partaking in something that violates your identity will make you weak.

If you can’t reframe it, eliminate it.