Dealing with dissonance

Dealing with dissonance in your life can be very emotionally, spiritually and even physically challenging. Dissonance is the in between stage of turbulence and chaotic vibrations as you battle inside yourself to come to a resolution. You may be fighting to quit vaping. You may be fighting to stay on track with your training. You may be fighting to remain in your relationship. You may be fighting to not resign your job despite having 'one too many problems' at work. Whatever the reason, dissonance is difficult to deal with.

Your mind tells you that 'this is the right answer.' But your body and feelings tell you differently. Complete dichotomy, black and white, and it pulls at you from both ends like you being metaphorically forced to do a middle split and someone pushing you down with absolute joy.

Dissonance can come in other moments. You are nervous to do a presentation. You have prepared a lot (maybe not enough), you know what you want to say and are passionate about the topic. But you feel that anxiety, the self-doubt and the vibrations occuring as the time to present creeps closer. That too is dissonance. You know you can do it, you know you have prepared, but your body is telling you otherwise.

Like most of my topics, what you do during this dissonance will set you up for great habits. What you do during such dissonance is part of the training in life. Do you run to the comfort of reassuring friends, partners, family, substances, situations? Do you give in to the easy way out? What do you do? Everyone runs differently.

Dissonance is difficult as both versions of you still ultimately feel like you. The you that is good, the you that is bad. It's like the story of two wolves. We have two wolves inside us, the good and the bad. Which do we feed? Well, the answer is both wolves. We need both in order to live realistically. Humankind is like that. There is no such thing as utopia or perfection. Good exists because of bad. Light exists because of darkness. Hot exists because of cold. Love exists because of hate. There is never a perfect balance, as William Yates says "the centre cannot hold."

This complicates things, having to juggle the two sides. I do believe part of having to juggle the good and the bad parts of you means that life is all about dissonance. Getting out of your comfort zone no matter what stage of life you are in is crucial. My father who is 78 this year (I admit I say this too much...) still tries to take difficult paths "unnecessarily" in order to train his mind and breaking free from comfort. Dissonance is you, don't try to avoid it or come to terms with it so intensely. It's okay to feel those feelings. It's NOT okay to always give in to the difficulty of these feelings however.

One's ability to focus on the present is a very important skill to save you from distractions during dissonance. We hear this all the time, "be present, live in the moment," something along those lines. To specify, one's ability to focus on what truly matters during the difficult feelings of dissonance will help calm these feelings. Do not tell yourself "this is just lying to yourself." Going back to the above examples... You're nervous about your presentation? Focus on your purpose, the message you MUST deliver. Compare with some religious evangelisers, they yell at the top of their lungs with not even a hint of wavering in their motives. That is because they BELIEVE the message they are speaking about. You must believe your words like a Bible, as facts. Of course this takes a lot of time to hone the meaning and delivery of your message. Focus helps BLOCK OUT some of the negative feelings of dissonance. Focusing on the wrong thing however, I'd say everyone knows how that will go. You wallow into the pit of despair and all things negative, which paralyses your sense of purpose and action.

We must also be patient. This doesn't mean having the mindset of "if I put in more time, intensity and effort, I will get there faster." This is a dangerous mindset to have. Examples include being highly motivated, excited and passionate to lose weight and you starve yourself, hoping every bit of your suffering will give rewards. This is dangerous. We must remain calm and patient. Ironically, having to calm down your methodology in order to do good is also a different but similar aspect of dissonance in one's life. Dissonance is in all aspects of life.

"He who has a why, will bear any how."

We must stick to facts. Real, authentic facts which require an ongoing process of vetting. Is this actually real? Sometimes what seems to be gold is actually copper. Someone who seems to be good on all fronts, is actually bad. We are trained to see this in linear movies from childhood. Disney movies for example. Among complexity and the feelings of drowning in dissonance, seek refuge in facts. Seek what is false first, as truth will reveal itself from a process of elimination.

TLDR: Dissonance itself is not a problem. We must welcome it through training our minds DURING dissonance. Learn to embrace it through the appreciation of incremental progression and achievements. Look back after some time and bask in the well-earnt fruits of hard work, deliberation and consistency.