How To Understand The Power of Cognitive Dissonance for Business Success and Personal Effectiveness
How to Use Selective Perception to Your Advantage and Achieve Business Success Despite Cognitive Dissonance
This post is a follow-up to my previous post on Cognitive dissonance and how our effectiveness can be affected. Based on the internal discord that happens between our minds and our hearts many times, we become a lot more selective. Selective perception is an often overlooked aspect of personal effectiveness that has a big impact on our success or failure. It can be defined as the tendency to block out information that does not support our existing beliefs and expectations regarding ourselves, our goals or what we have been conditioned to think. This phenomenon is based on the sure-enough principle whereby when we have a Personal expectation about something, we subconsciously tend to act accordingly.
In other words, if we expect ourselves to be successful in achieving certain goals or tasks, then according to selective perception, our actions will help find ways to reinforce this belief and make it come true. On the other hand, if we don’t believe in ourselves and set low expectations in our mind the subconscious will try to validate it by seeking negative feedback from others as well as the environment around us. For this reason, it is important for Personal development and discipline that we always try and adjust our mental attitude with positive thinking so that we are able to use selective perception in an effective way and achieve our ultimate goals.
How To Feedback to Change Your Perceptions and Achieve Business And Personal Success
So many things influence our perception of the world and by extension our behaviour and response to what the world throws at us. One of those things that influence us is Feedback. This can be said to be that Psychological or sensory information we receive from our surroundings and from others that tells us how we are doing and whether we should change our behaviour or continue doing the same in the future. Depending on how we react to the information, feedback either modifies or reinforces future behaviour. Even though Feedback can be annoying, what we must do is seek the truth. The truth frequently stings. So you must fortify yourself to begin viewing life in ways other than the way you currently do. When we are setting goals or making changes, feedback that does not match what we want to hear can be upsetting, and we may believe that the people are negative. They may or may not be negative. But one thing is certain; Feedback usually hurts. for instance when we know we want to weigh something and step on the scale. And the feedback irritates us greatly! So, what are we to do? We’re not even going to step on the scale because we do not want to see the truth. Denial of reality is a normal thing, but we’ve got to know that it is normal when we are doing it. On your journey to become more effective, it is important to pay attention to the conversations happening around you, the books you read, audios you listen to and the videos you watch… etc.
Why is that? because our belief and expectations of ourselves and others, build upon this foundation. here is the thing: When we have a belief or an expectation about ourselves or others, we act and behave subconsciously in accordance with our belief, which confirms our original belief because we get what we expect. It is also known as the SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY, which is a phenomenon in which our prediction about the future may come true due to the belief that underpins that prediction.
How to Overcome Pre and Post-Dissonance to Make Smart Personal Decisions
Let me draw you back to the previous post on cognitive dissonance. As a way of reminding you, I explained that Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time. For example, you may know that smoking is bad for your health, but you continue to smoke anyway. This state of conflict can create a lot of stress and anxiety, but it can also be harnessed to help you achieve your goals. If you’re trying to quit smoking, for example, cognitive dissonance can be a powerful motivator to finally kick the habit for good. Building upon that, let me mention here that we all experience this internal disagreement at one time or the other on different fronts; either before we make a decision, or after we make a decision. This is called POST-DISSONANCE AND PRE-DISSONANCE.
Many people struggle to make decisions because they don’t want to appear stupid or insane. This is known as pre-dissonance. Post-dissonance occurs after you have made a decision, such as a purchase, and you tell yourself, “Was I insane to buy those clothes? Was I insane to buy that car? Was I a moron?” What you now require is for people to approach you and say, “Oh, no! They’re gorgeous! They look great!” It is commonly referred to as “buyer’s remorse.” I know this happens all the time. We want someone else to validate our decision. We hate to feel stupid.
Our individual worldviews shape the way we view our lives. Too often, when faced with the opinion that something will not work, people are tempted to gravitate towards gathering evidence confirming their initial belief instead of seeking out information objectively. This is known as The Sure-enough Principle – it’s a kind of tunnel vision which prevents us from accepting alternative perspectives and keeps us locked in one mindset or another. Achieving success requires broadening your horizons; challenging yourself to look beyond what you already know and recognizing just how many opportunities lie ahead if only you can learn to trust those around you and open your mind up to new possibilities!
How to Unlock the Power of Open-Mindedness for Personal Effectiveness and Success
The reason I am sharing this with you is to raise your consciousness as to how we behave depending on our perception of the world and our responses, and the results we get. When you become more conscious and aware, you can identify the root of your results and change your results through your behavior.
As we have seen, Selective Perception has the power to impact our personal effectiveness and success. We must not overlook the importance of feedback when adapting and adjusting to the world around us. While everyone wants to be successful, few understand where our success or failure truly derives from. Our selective perception is not just an overlooked aspect of personal effectiveness, it has a massive impact on our ability to make our dreams a reality. From feedback to post-dissonance and pre-dissonance, so many shades of the way we interpret our environment and how we make decisions in life. But the good news is that unlocking this tool for personal effectiveness offers you the chance to design your life as you desire – success included! The combination of conscious evaluation aided by feedback is perhaps one of the most powerful tools available to improve our lives. Unlocking the power of your perceptions can be transformative and open up so many new possibilities in your attitude, creativity, relationships, career, and even happiness. So consider giving yourself a chance to go through this exercise; it could just be the yoga class for the mind that you’ve been waiting for! As long as you remain conscious and mindful of your perception, be willing to accept new viewpoints, and take appropriate steps to transform them into actionable goals, the sky’s the limit. So, go forth and enjoy all that open-mindedness has to offer!
