The World’s Greatest Mind Trick… & The Holidays

“You’ll either have a great experience, or a great story… but probably not both.”
—Jason Seiden

Given: Not every holiday will be fun.

Hypothesis: You can create a lifetime of happy memories for yourself, even out of those less-than-pleasant family gatherings, by using cognitive dissonance.

Experiment: Create a set of memories that conflict with the original set. Assuming you started with bad ones, invent happier, new ones, in which you look back and laugh about how ridiculous the bad memories are. Let human nature take its course.

Why this works: Your brain can hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time, but it doesn’t like doing so. This discomfort is called “cognitive dissonance.” In the case of holiday memories, your brain is likely going to resolve the conflict by pushing out one memory or the other. You don’t have to do anything, this happens naturally. All you have to do is create the conflicting belief.

Here’s me explaining the concept to Elle:

In other circumstances, your brain may not resolve its internal conflict so neatly. Where your beliefs are tied to your ego or identity, not so much on the clean resolution. In these cases, you’re more likely going to sustain the internal conflict and externalize the emotional distress.

When not to use cognitive dissonance: For instance, political debates are fraught with cognitive dissonance… and ego and identity. Conservatives may love states rights when arguing against federal abortion laws, but they’ll love federal supremacy when arguing against cities’ gun control efforts. Call them out on the dissonance in their positions, and you’re more likely to get an emotional outburst than a well-reasoned explanation. (The same is true for liberals on the other side of the arguments.) Again, the reason you get the emotion is because of cognitive dissonance: their brains have rationalized belief systems that rely on conflicting premises, which in turn creates emotional discomfort. Because they have defined themselves based on these beliefs, when you force the issue, what you get is emotional release. (That discomfort has got to go somewhere!)

Conclusion: Cognitive dissonance is a powerful tool. Using it to creating happy holiday memories atop the lousy ones you already have is a great idea. Using it to call a political opponent a hypocrite, however, is bad.

How else might you use the idea of cognitive dissonance to create change… either in yourself or others?

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.