I used to think I was a pretty self-aware person. I mean, I had a graduate degree, worked in mental health, and spent a lot of time helping other people untangle their thoughts. Surely, I had a good grasp on my own mind, right?
Yeah. No.
As my professor Dr. Rob used to remind us—constantly, like a broken record—“Humans are terrible self-assessors. Every single one of us.” At the time, I nodded along, assuming he was talking about other people. You know, the ones who refuse to admit they’re wrong, who make the same mistakes over and over, who insist they’re excellent drivers while cutting people off in traffic. It took years (and a whole lot of life experience) for me to realize: Oh. He was talking about me, too.
Enter cognitive dissonance and implicit bias, the subconscious troublemakers running in the background of my mind for most of my life. These two concepts aren’t just academic theories—they’re daily realities that quietly shape our thoughts, choices, and relationships in ways we barely notice. And if you’d asked me a decade ago whether they applied to me, I probably would have said, “Nope, I’m pretty open-minded.” Which is exactly the kind of thing someone suffering from both would say.
Let’s start with cognitive dissonance, which is just a fancy way of describing that uncomfortable mental tug-of-war we experience when our actions don’t match our values. It’s that feeling you get when you tell yourself you’re a healthy person… while eating a donut for breakfast. Or when you swear you’re frugal but somehow justify a $200 impulse buy because it was “on sale.” (Guilty.)
I ran headfirst into my own cognitive dissonance during my divorce. For years, I held onto certain beliefs about marriage, commitment, and what it meant to “succeed” in a relationship. I told myself that if I just worked hard enough or sacrificed enough, things would work out. But the truth was messier. I had built my sense of self around ideas that weren’t actually mine—they were ones I absorbed from childhood, church, and school. And when those beliefs started conflicting with my lived experience, my brain did what all brains do when faced with dissonance: it panicked. It grasped for justifications, ignored reality, and tried to make things fit even when they didn’t.
Looking back, I realize I spent most of my twenties and thirties running on autopilot, reacting to everything and everyone around me, completely unaware of the mental gymnastics my brain was doing to keep my beliefs intact. Cognitive dissonance was practically steering the ship, making sure I justified, rationalized, or outright ignored anything that didn’t fit the version of the world I thought was true. I was exhausted, constantly at war with myself without even realizing it. It wasn’t until I finally stopped—really stopped—and did the hard work of self-awareness that things started to shift. I incorporated mindfulness techniques into my daily life—journaling, meditation, reading—and for the first time, I actually paid attention to my thoughts instead of just reacting to them. I also found a great counselor who saw right through my justifications and helped me untangle my dissonance (Thanks, Bill!). And let me tell you, it was uncomfortable. When you start seeing the stories you’ve been telling yourself for decades and realize half of them don’t hold up under scrutiny, it’s humbling. But it’s also freeing.
Then there’s implicit bias, which is even trickier because it’s unconscious. It’s not the obvious, mustache-twirling villain of overt prejudice. It’s the quiet, behind-the-scenes influence that shapes how we see the world—who we trust, who we assume is competent, who we gravitate toward. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve carried plenty of biases over the years. Not because I’m a bad person, but because, like all of us, I was raised in a particular environment that shaped my perceptions before I even knew what a perception was.
And here’s the thing: implicit bias isn’t just about politically charged agendas or DEI initiatives. It’s not some corporate training module you sit through while thinking about your grocery list. It’s about how our brains categorize information, form assumptions, and make snap judgments—sometimes in ways that serve us, but often in ways that limit us. It’s about why we instinctively trust some people over others, why we associate certain careers with certain genders, why we assume we know someone’s story just by looking at them. It’s everywhere, and it’s been shaping our worldviews long before we ever had the language to name it.
Growing up, I absorbed all sorts of messages without realizing it—about gender roles, about authority, about which beliefs I was expected to accept and which ones I was supposed to ignore or deny. School taught me that the loudest, most confident people were the smartest (spoiler: they’re not). Church taught me that questioning things too much was dangerous (spoiler: it’s not). Athletics taught me that whoever had the best high school career was destined for the most successful life (spoiler: completely false). And society in general reinforced a thousand little ideas that I didn’t think to question—until life forced me to.
Raising my kids was one of those forcing functions. It’s humbling (and a little horrifying) to hear your own unconscious biases come out of your child’s mouth. Nothing makes you more aware of your knee-jerk assumptions than having to explain to a curious five-year-old why you believe what you do. “Because that’s just how it is” doesn’t cut it when a tiny, determined human is staring at you, waiting for an actual answer.
So what do you do when you realize your own brain has been running on outdated software?
For me, it took a lot of very intentional, sometimes painful, and often uncomfortable self-reflection. I had to become insanely curious about my thoughts, my reactions, and my justifications. I had to ask myself, Why do I believe this? Where did this idea come from? Is it actually true, or is it just familiar? And most importantly: Who benefits from me holding onto this belief?
This kind of work isn’t easy. It requires admitting that you’ve been wrong—probably a lot. It requires sitting with discomfort instead of scrambling to make it go away. It requires recognizing that just because something feels right doesn’t mean it is right. And it’s never a one-and-done process. I still catch myself in moments of cognitive dissonance. I still uncover biases I didn’t know I had. And I still think about Dr. Rob’s words every time I get a little too confident in my own self-awareness.
But here’s what I’ve learned: the more you question, the more you grow. And the more you grow, the more you realize just how much you don’t know. That’s not a bad thing—it’s the best thing. Because when we become aware of the forces shaping our thoughts, we get to decide what to do with them. We get to choose which beliefs we hold onto and which ones we let go. We get to be active participants in our own minds instead of just running on autopilot.
So I’ll leave you with this: What are the beliefs you’ve never really questioned? What assumptions do you hold that might not actually be yours? Have you ever experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance that made you completely reevaluate something you thought you knew?
If your answer is “I don’t think so,” well… that’s exactly what I would have said, too.
But maybe—just maybe—Dr. Rob was talking about you as well.
Peace my friends,
~Travis
