Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [44]
These are fairly clear-cut examples. There will be many occasions, however, when our motives are not clear to ourselves, when we desire something that is at odds with our situation, or we think one thing and say another, or we act in a way that is not really what we mean. In many situations there might well be very good reason why this happens (for example, we quell an urge to buy something, or we stop ourselves doing something wrong, or we act in a certain way because we ‘have to’). There are many internal struggles that people fight on a daily basis.
Does this mean we should sometimes be incoherent? Yes, to begin with, perhaps. In the longer term, however, we suggest that success and well-being depend upon coherence. When a person deliberately or unconsciously acts without coherence there will be some kind of cost in personal terms, although it may not be apparent at the time.
49. How personal coherence has consequences over time
Although we believe coherence/incoherence is revealed and perceived unconsciously as well as consciously, some of the consequences of being incoherent are not immediate. Smoking is a classic example of this. Many smokers say they are happy to smoke, but eight out of ten wish they had never started smoking.
In terms of the timeline for problems surfacing
Immediate issues include a reduction in performance on things you tackle, either problem-solving, decision-making or everyday work. This is simply because a smaller proportion of your energies will be aligned to the task at hand. You are using up valuable resources by being incoherent.
It is also likely that others will notice – either consciously or subconsciously – the lack of consistency revealed by your words and actions. This can have all sorts of negative effects on you, such as feeling stressed and failing to maintain good relationships with others. Other people detect incoherence and this may result in not getting selected for teams, or groups, or failing in promotions.
Another negative consequence, though not quite so clear to show, is that the incoherence is likely to create negative emotional and other forces within you. This might reveal itself in tension, anxieties, stress or even defensiveness and feelings of unease, especially as your cognitive system mulls over how to align those incoherences.
It is more likely that, to begin with, you will notice your own incoherences when they first emerge as feelings of unease. It is easier to do something about them at this point. However, this is often not possible because the signs are not very obvious and it may be that you do not realise what the signals are that you are getting (internally and from others).
As time goes by and you live with your own incoherences they become more firmly entrenched by the force of habit. However, people who have incoherences within Levels 3 to 5 will find life a particular struggle. At these levels the incoherences are usually felt by the person and cannot be ignored. They may try to plaster over them with self-justifying reasons and self-deceptions. For example, the recidivist smoker might say to themselves ‘one won’t matter’, or the inveterate shopper may hide purchases from their partner and put their behaviour down to a fault in the other.
Longer-term consequences of incoherence come in many forms. In a sense, incoherence is a form of lying to yourself and will bring with it all the attendant problems of lying. This means that as time goes by the self-lying requires more and more complex processes and self-deceptions to maintain. This is likely to multiply the incoherence many times more. As this happens the incoherences that once were evident only perhaps to you become plainer for others to see (because it is not possible to hide them) and they often become more extensive and infect more aspects of you and your behaviours. This will make you a less attractive person to others in many ways, but it