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Your Self-Limiting Habit is… Rationalization!

Life often throws us curve balls, and sometimes the crappy ones are the ones that form our deepest beliefs. But sometimes, things come to challenge those hard programmed beliefs and we tell ourselves lies so that we can hold onto our often pessimistic, self-limiting beliefs. Thus, we have the skill of Rationalization for those things that create Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance refers to the mental discomfort experienced when we hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or when we are confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, values, or norms.

This discomfort is reduced by either changing our attitudes, beliefs, or actions or by rationalizing or justifying the contradiction.

For example, consider an individual who is well aware of the health risks associated with smoking, including increased risks of lung cancer, heart disease, and other serious conditions, yet continues to smoke.

This presents a clear conflict between the individual’s knowledge of the harmful effects of smoking and their behavior of smoking.

To reduce the discomfort caused by this cognitive dissonance, the individual might employ several justification strategies, such as minimizing the risks (“I only smoke a few cigarettes a day, so it’s not that bad”), highlighting the difficulty of quitting (“I’ve tried to quit several times without success, so it’s too hard to stop”), or shifting the focus to immediate gratification over long-term health (“Smoking helps me relax and deal with stress now, and that’s what’s important to me”).

These rationalizations serve to reduce the dissonance between understanding the dangers of smoking and continuing to smoke.

Another example is if someone you trust lies to you early in life, it can be easy to believe that everyone will lie, even though later life experience shows you that there are lots of beautifully trustworthy people out there.

It seems more comfortable for you to believe they will eventually lie to you so that you’ll be ready when you’re disappointed by their eventual and inevitable betrayal.

I don’t think it’s hard to see why this is self-limiting.

By constantly believing that others will lie to you, let you down, and betray you, you keep yourself from ever truly trusting anyone, and you end up robbing yourself of healthy, meaningful connections.

When you’ve failed even though you tried hard, it can be easy to believe that you will ALWAYS fail, no matter how hard you try, even though repeated success shows there are times you do not fail.

When you keep selecting the option of NOT believing what you see in reality, you get to keep your old, comfortable beliefs… but at what cost?

Luckily, there are steps you can take to overcome Rationalizations used to manage Cognitive Dissonance.

Here are a few strategies to help you stop letting rationalizations hold you back:

-Identify and Challenge Rationalizations:

You have to dig deep and find the courage to believe that it’s SAFE to challenge your own limiting beliefs.

Recognize when your actions and beliefs are misaligned, creating cognitive dissonance. When you catch yourself making excuses, confront the discomfort and re-evaluate your behavior to align with your true values and goals.

This self-awareness helps reduce rationalizations and encourages more honest self-assessment.

-Set Clear Goals and Priorities:

It can be hard work to overcome our crappy beliefs when reality shows you that they’re wrong. Yes, you have to admit that you were wrong.

Establishing clear goals can help by providing a strong sense of direction. When your actions deviate from these goals, the resulting dissonance or disconnection will prompt you to correct your actions and thoughts.

This discomfort motivates us to stay focused and avoid rationalizing unproductive behaviors.

-Hold Yourself Accountable:

Share your goals with a trusted friend or mentor. By doing this, you introduces an additional layer of cognitive dissonance (but from somebody you trust) then when you fail to meet your own expectations, it will make it harder for you to justify your actions with rationalizations.

Seeking a trusted external perspective can provide a reality check and reinforce your commitment to your goals.

Develop a Learning Mentality:

Embracing a learning perspective can help you manage and shift cognitive dissonance. Instead of rationalizing failures, view them as opportunities to learn and grow.

Once you can reconcile the reasons behind your previous limiting beliefs, you can address the uncomfortable insecurities that they were hiding.

This mindset shifts the discomfort of dissonance into a positive force for change, reducing the need to justify mistakes.

Practice Self-Discipline:

Strengthening self-control helps manage cognitive dissonance by aligning your actions with your long-term goals. Adhering to routines and boundaries, you experience less dissonance between your immediate desires and your overarching objectives.

This alignment reduces the need for rationalizations and fosters more consistent, disciplined behavior.

Strategies to Overcome Procrastination!

If you want to stop the self-sabotage and finally get out of your own way, the key is understanding why you’re doing it — what need is it filling?

Then, apply a little creativity to identify healthier, happier, and more productive ways to meet those needs.

Here’s a simple guide to help you begin the journey of rewriting your self-limiting beliefs and habits:

The Habit of Rationalization can have significant effects in numerous areas of our lives–here are just a few:

  • Our Health: Ignoring Warning Signs Relying on rationalizations to manage our cognitive dissonance can have detrimental effects when we use it to ignore health warning signs, justifying our unhealthy behavior.

For example, someone might rationalize frequent headaches as just a result of stress, rather than seeking medical advice. This can delay diagnosis and treatment of potentially serious conditions, leading to worsened health outcomes.

  • Relationships: Excusing Negative Behavior In relationships, justifying a partner’s disrespectful or abusive actions—can damage trust and intimacy. Or always rationalizing our own behavior with a blind spot for accepting responsibility to change the behav
  • Career | Justifying Procrastination:  In the workplace, rationalizing procrastination can hinder professional growth and success. By convincing yourself that a task can be done later or isn’t important, you may miss deadlines, produce lower-quality work, and fail to meet your professional goals. This often leads to poor decision-making and increased stress.

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you want to stop the self-sabotage and finally get out of your own way, the key is understanding why you’re doing it — what need is it filling?

Then, apply some creativity to identify healthier, happier, and more productive ways to meet those needs.

Here’s a simple guide to help you begin the journey of rewriting your self-sabotaging programming:

1.The First Step is Self-Awareness

Inventory – Reflect back and get curious about your own self-sabotage.

  • What does your self-sabotage look like?
  • How does it typically start?
  • Are there any unhealthy patterns?

By taking the time to reflect and notice any repeating patterns, you can more easily recognize when it’s time to take over and kick those traits to the curb. You can then take a moment to pause and get familiar with what’s happening in your mind and body – what’s triggering them and how it feels physically.

2. Challenge – Once you’ve spotted your self-limiting habits, it’s time to challenge what they’re actually doing for you.

So ask yourself what your self-limiting habits ‘do’ for you – and then do the harder work of uncovering some underlying issues you need to work through. Whether it is childhood trauma, feelings of inadequacy, or daily struggles in life, they can all lead to self-limiting beliefs and behaviors.

Once you’ve spotted your negative self-limiting habits and rooted them out, you can make a new pattern that serves your end goals and helps you grow with confidence and healing.

Think about who you really want to be – and start aligning your actions to that potential. Use affirmations to help ease your negative self-talk, so the next time you find yourself turning to your old self-sabotaging ways, you can confidently choose your new, self-affirming solutions.

Most importantly, be compassionate. Old habits die hard, but with repetition, you will change routined thinking and behaving. Just stop, recognize that you’re trying, and remind yourself of why these patterns didn’t actually work for you before – then give yourself the opportunity to do better.

We all use rationalization, especially when we need to reduce the discomfort associated with cognitive dissonance. But when used chronically or without awareness, it is dangerous to our health and our self-efficacy.

If you want to learn to stop rationalizing away your health concerns and overcome the struggle of living with chronic self-doubt, I have created a few programs just for you.

The programs are based in science and designed from my three decades of working with thousands of women just like you!

Overcoming Self-Doubt and Women’s Holistic Health

Hey there!

I’m Dr. Lori, clinical health psychologist, women’s empowerment coach, author, speaker, TV contributor and creator of REAL Women’s Collective™ a private community filled with tools, strategies, courses, Live Q/A and a community of supportive women.
In my 35 years of practice as a psychologist, I have learned that at the core of almost every struggle is fear and self-doubt.
The First Step is SELF-AWARENESS.
Learning yourself better involves bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness to stop living on auto-pilot and actively engage in successful, authentic living.
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“Self-destruction and self-sabotaging are often just the start of the self-resurrection process.”

― Oli Anderson

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