In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, convictions and things that are going on all around us.
Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as mental and emotional stress when an individual participates in an action that goes against what they know is right. According to this theory, when two desires or ideas are not consistent with each other, people will try to justify and compromise until they become consistent enough to be accepted. This discomfort is triggered by the person’s knowledge clashing against new information when it’s introduced, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their guilt.
This might sound like a lot of psychological gobbledygook, and you might be asking, what does all of this have to do with me and the way I live? I’m glad you asked. We all have a lot of personal and secret thoughts going on in our minds, and how we deal with it goes a long way toward being a more stable, balanced and spiritually content person.
I’m not excited about it, but we are constantly exposed to negative voices and influences that we might consider, but I hope we refuse. The point is coming to the place where we are honest with God and ourselves.
Many of our headaches and anxieties are self-inflicted, and our temptations often come from areas where we are weak and vulnerable. The devil has been watching us for a long time, and there is no reason for him to stop using tactics against us that are always successful.