‘Cognitive dissonance’, a psychological term can be said as the reason behind why we lie to ourselves. We may experience cognitive dissonance; we feel an uncomfortable tension too between who we believe we are how we are behaving.
Most probably we lie to ourselves mainly on the progress that we are making on important goals. Let’s discuss some of the examples.
If we want to lose weight and become slim, we may claim that we are taking a healthy diet now. But the reality is that our eating habits are haven’t changed much.
If we want to become more creative we may try to say that we are trying more to write, but in reality, we are not holding ourselves to a rigid publishing schedule.
If we are studying something new let it be a new language, we may say that we have been consistent with our practice even though we skipped last days practice with some sort of other works.
Sometime we may say that “I’m doing my best with the time that is available for me” or sometimes “Nowadays trying hard”. These statements do not include any type of hard measurements. They are usually just excuses that make us feel better about having some goal that hasn’t made any kind of real progress towards.
These little lies matter, because they may prevent us from self-awareness. Yes, emotions and feelings have an important place in our life. But when we use to feel good statements to track our progress in our life, we will most probably end up in lying to ourselves about what we are doing.
As a physician uses stethoscope as a tool to get an independent diagnosis of that what was going on inside the patient, we can also use some kind of tools to get an independent diagnosis to know about what was going on inside our own lives. If you are serious about getting something better, then its first step is to know it well from its black and white terms. To achieve self-improvement you need self-awareness first.
Here are some tools which may help you to make yourself more self-aware.
Workout Journal: – Since from the best two years I am using a workout journal to record each workout that I do every day. This may help me to use my workout time more efficiently. It is very interesting to take back and check the progress that I had made. I think it is very useful every week. When I go to the gym, I will go through the weight that I had lifted last week and this week I will add some more weight to it.
This method helps me to avoid wasting time in the gym.
Annual reviews: – I used to make an annual report at the end of each year. This will help to take a look at the progress that I had made in my business, health, travel food etc. This may also help to find the loss of time and money for which I had spender more. It will give me a clear picture of each year’s expense and incomes and also do some sort of in activities to up bring my core values.
RESCUE TIME: – Mostly I use my rescue time to find out how I have spent my working hours each week.
Before making such kind of rescue time in life I believed myself as a fairly productive one.
When I had rescue time for the first time I realized about the pathetic condition of my working schedule. Out of 8 hours working period in my day out of it, 9% is used for visiting and revisiting social media sites. If u ask me about using social media, during my working hours before making rescue time, I will say, t won’t take much time or no time to use it. I spend my working hours because now I realize that where I truly stand I will help me to get improvements.
To Get Self Alert
It is difficult to change your life with any kind of degree of consistency. If you are not aware of what you are and what you are doing. Trying to build better habits and new habits without knowing yourselves is like trying to hit on the bull’s eye at night without knowing where the target is. I can produce the best example. Some people will try to make six pack abs without measuring or caring about the food they take. After realizing the way of food taking they will try to measure each calorie and the way of food taking.
The thing which I am trying to say is if you want to make changes in yourself first you should be true enough to yourself and want to get know about yourself.
Daily inspiration for a better life ahead. I’m grateful for wisdom and guidance.