What are you saying to me? /August 3, 2013

A few weeks ago I wrote about cognitive dissonance and the discomfort it causes. From the calls and e-mails I have been receiving people are certainly feeling a good degree of discomfort at the moment, and by extension I assume there is plenty of cognitive dissonance associated with it.

The way I see it working is as follows:

We all have our established identity, which we have worked a lifetime to establish. It is our personal story. That story is held together by a set of belief patterns and ideas. Those stories are staunchly defended by our EGO which in this case is an acronym for Emotion Generating Oraganism. The EGO's job is to re-inforce and protect our identity.

When we receive a piece of information which is in accord with our story our EGO rewards us by generating an emotion which feels nice. This is normally called being right! Our beliefs are confirmed by our experience. Normally it is being liked, loved, recognised, winning, achieving, gaining, being better than...all confirmation of our story.

When we receive a piece of information which is not in accord with our story, the EGO gets busy generating emotions designed to move us away from that information. We may get angry, fearful, sad or depressed. These emotions are effectively fight/flight designed to make us either defend our existing identity or to run away from the new information which threatens it.

I think we are all receiving a lot of new information at the moment and much of it will not be aligned to our personal stories. If you are feeling discomfort be curious as to which piece of information may be threatening your identity. Who knows it may be a blessing in disguise.


Love

Bill