Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [50]
That’s because it is the lack of coherence that obscures the right choice.
If, for example, what you desire is at odds with what you say, or if your habits are at odds with what you want to do, or what you think does not correspond with how you feel, knowing what to decide about something will be difficult. So decisions will appear difficult when a person is incoherent. For a coherent person the ‘choice’ will be crystal clear.
People make their lives and their decisions difficult because of their incoherence. For example, you agree to work late on the same evening you had promised to take the kids to see a film. It appears to be a no-win situation but the ‘right’ decision is the one that is consistent with your moral/life choices. A coherent person is able to handle the consequences that arise where roles and choices appear to conflict.
58. Why does DSD improve decisions?
The eight coherence levels we detailed on p.119 are your
1. desires
2. habits
3. thoughts
4. intentions
5. words
6. behaviours
7. memories
8. reflections.
Things go wrong – decisions are wrong – when these eight levels are not coherent or when they appear to point to different choices. DSD provides a way of accessing each of these levels. If we carry on doing what we have always done, research shows that our desires and intentions, our thoughts and our memories, become buried and lost to us. Routines and habits can get detached from reasons and wants, as well as from the demands of a situation.
DSD is a great revealer. By exposing our habits it shows us where our behaviours need to change. The consequences of doing something different provoke new reactions and give us insight into how our thoughts get reshaped by our actions. When we switch off our autopilot DSD helps to reveal all facets of the situation and the choices we have become clearer to us. DSD allows us the opportunity to reclaim what we might have lost to the unconscious and automatised. DSD allows the reflecting self to see things in a new light, to go back in time and check if things have changed or not, in the situation and in ourselves.
Without the reality check of DSD, over time the wrong choices can begin to look as if they are the right choices. For example, one powerful psychological force is cognitive dissonance – if a person is incoherent at any level, cognitive dissonance will act to resolve the incoherence. That is, if someone acts in a way that is incoherent with their beliefs, the person will change their beliefs so they fit with their current actions. A person who believes aggression is wrong and then acts aggressively towards another may justify it to themselves by saying the other person deserved it. Cognitive dissonance, however, just papers over the cracks – if the basic incoherence remains within the self, the negative consequences will be revealed at some time in the future. It is no good reshaping our cognitions if our basic behaviours are not compatible with our real-life choices. Many smokers, for example, insist they like smoking despite the fact that they would rather not smoke. For most smokers, the power of cognitive dissonance may make them say they enjoy smoking, when a change in behaviour (i.e. giving up smoking) is the only coherent ‘choice’.
59. People are not choice machines
People do not allow their choices to be determined in an entirely rational or clear-cut way. Human beings are not machines. We are incoherent and inconsistent. We don’t systematically weigh up pros and cons and reach a balanced logical conclusion. We often overlook or even ignore facts we know, or allow hedonistic desires to dominate our choices. Our actions may be inconsistent with what we say, and sometimes we are left wondering why we made a particular choice or what was behind our intention. You may well