Changing habits hurts.
We’ve all been there. We know that a few more hours of sleep would be good for us, a few less bites of chocolate cake, and a few more pages of reading. And yet we find ourselves up late, watching Netflix, and eating chocolate cake. What gives?
We know what is good for us, and we know what is bad for us. But this doesn’t stop us from indulging in the bad and procrastinating on the good. Our minds are caught in a constant struggle between who we are and who we wish to be. And thinking about the distance between us and our ideal only enhances the stress.
What if the reason for this stress isn’t necessarily because you’re guilty about not living as your ideal? What if instead you feel stressed out when changing your habits because your brain doesn’t believe you? While you’re intentions to change are good, the old you has become comfortable with the world you already live in. So far it hasn’t killed you anyway, so why change?
When we set intentions to change our habits, we are signalling to our minds that we need to change. But since we already live in the reality of having not changed, our brains experience a discomfort. This discomfort can lead to slacking on our new habits, or even quitting them entirely. But we have good news, this discomfort has a name: cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance — is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. -Wikipedia
Any time you attempt to change habits, you will experience some level of cognitive dissonance. The old you believes in the world you live in, because healthy or not it has worked to keep you alive so far. The new you believes that there are greener pastures to be had if you start doing things differently. The future and past wage war, and the present you is stuck making all the decisions between a bickering couple.
Too many people allow the discomfort of cognitive dissonance stop them from moving forward. They become paralyzed by the discomfort and often find themselves repeating the same old habits they wish to break. The discomfort of change places the willpower of a person on thin ice. When outside stress arrives, it sends them straight back into old habits. Into what I like to call “the comfort zone”.
In our world of infinite and expanding conveniences, the average person’s tolerance for discomfort is about the size of one forgotten password link. Our tolerance for discomfort has become so small that nonexistent entities in the made up digital world are powerful enough to break us emotionally.
Why is this a problem? Discomfort is your friend. You do not grow without a feeling of discomfort on some level. Your muscles must be torn down in order to build back up. Your beliefs must be tested in order to become stronger. And your daily routines must feel foreign and scary at some point or another before they will become second nature again.
We must embrace discomfort, and lean in to the cognitive dissonance we all feel. Practice when you’re tired, and lay down for bed when you’re not. Drive past the fast food restaurants when you’re hungry and force down the vegetables at home instead. Stare at a page of words and hide the remote. Work until you sweat, and then keep going. You’ve got to get uncomfortable in order to change.
Discomfort, struggle, pain, these are all parts of the human experience. Without them we have nothing to compare the good times to. Embrace the discomfort, the struggle, and the pain. Push yourself to grow in the areas you wish to grow. Better to experience the discomfort on purpose now than to find yourself uncomfortable for life due to self neglect.
Embrace discomfort, lean in to the challenges of change, and you will come out the other side a stronger person.
