Human brains love black-and-white thinking. Thinking in terms of absolutes: of ‘right or wrong’, of ‘good or bad’, of ‘all or nothing’.

With black and white thinking, there’s no tension or resistance – none of the discomfort that comes with cognitive dissonance. Because things are either one way or the other way, and this allows us to settle into the comforting absence of ambiguity – the comfort of being 100 percent convinced that we’re right, or that we are good, or that they’re wrong, or that that’s bad.

Have you ever noticed that we think we need to control the world, and that – somewhere in the back of our subconscious minds – other people need to behave a certain way so we can feel good?

We have so many rules for our relationships that we’ve stopped experiencing them and are locked into the expectations of how the relationship SHOULD be, instead.

Ever find yourself wishing you could just stop over-drinking? You don’t identify as an alcoholic, per se – your drinking habits may be affecting your body or brain power a bit negatively, but they’re not affecting the lives of others or those you love – and maybe you don’t want to quit cold turkey, you just want to…reign it in a little?

I hear you. I’ve been there too. And it ain’t easy.

Cognitive dissonance. It’s one of those big, fancy scientific terms you may have heard before but only have a vague understanding of what it actually means when you really try to think about it.

The official dictionary definition? Cognitive dissonance is “The state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.”

But in lay people’s terms – and in terms of how to apply this concept to creating a life of freedom, adventure and purpose – cognitive dissonance is as simple as this: feeling like shit as you try to create a new belief.

So many of us use (or have used) buffering as a way of tolerating things that aren’t acceptable in our lives.

We use alcohol to make a boring party more fun. We use food to get rid of that anxious feeling in our stomach when we know our partner will respond with anger when we bring up a difficult topic. We use Netflix to distract ourselves from a stressful job that we hate.

What’s underneath this is: you have something in your life that isn’t great, something in your life that doesn’t really work, something in your life that you want to change.

Here’s a golden nugget of truth I’ve learned the hard way throughout my life: the more you have an aversion to discomfort, the more you actually suffer. It’s totally ironic, right? If all you did was stay in fancy places, if all you did was protect yourself from discomfort and everything was always temperature-controlled and soft and tasty and nice…the minute shit went wrong, you would have a much stronger reaction to it than if you had practiced being with discomfort and reminded yourself that life isn’t always comfortable. And that discomfort isn’t something to be…feared.