How We Fool Ourselves

 ‘Rahul,’ said Rinku onZoom . ‘Did you get that internship you applied for?’

‘No,’ said Rahul. ‘Arush got it. I wasn’t interested in it anyway. Went for the experience.’

‘But Rahul,’ said Rinku. ‘It was your dream company. You were really keen on it.’

‘Nah,’said Rahul. ‘I realised I don’t like that company. Too high profile. I’d like to work in a smaller company where I get seen. I’m glad I didn’t get it.’

‘Rahul,’ said Rakesh. ‘You seem to be experiencing Cognitive Dissonance. We tend to reinterpret things that don’t go in our favour to justify ourselves. Remember the story of the fox and the sour grapes?’

‘Bhaiyya it’s not about sour grapes,’said Rahul. ‘Anyway, what’s the harm?’

‘The harm is that we could make a habit of reinterpreting things to justify our failures or limitations and miss out on what’s good for us,’ said Rakesh. ‘In this case Rahul,if you hadn’t reinterpreted the story, you could have realised that Arush had a better set of skills than you, which you could work on. With Cognitive Dissonance we continue fooling ourselves and lose out on sweet grapes.’

 ‘Wow,’ said Rinku. ‘To justify ourselves we make wrong connections,and get stuck with them.’

‘I see that now,’ said Rahul. ‘But bhaiyya, when we make a bad decision, especially a major one, how can we recover from it? Or do we need to suffer the consequences of that decision forever?’

‘We needn’t suffer them forever Rahul,’ said Rakesh. ‘We can always correct the situation by being truthful - with ourselves. Consider another common error. Let’s say you’re halfway through a book or a movie or a meal and it’s not good. What would you do?’

‘I’ll finish it bhaiyya,’said Rinku. ‘Í’ve already invested so much time and money into it.’

‘But you do realise that you could suffer more by trying to cover past losses don’t you?’ laughed Rakesh. ‘It’s called sunk cost fallacy. Just because you invested time and energy,you need not suffer bad decisions, relationships, etc forever.Especially when you know they are lost causes.The right thinking process here is to forget about costs incurred and only assess future costs and benefits.’

‘Thanks bhaiyya,’ said Rahul. ‘That’s very helpful. I’ll look out for Cognitive Dissonance and Sunk Cost Fallacy in my thinking process in future.’

‘And like anything else, decision making needs practice too,’ said Rinku. ‘Let’s start practising with our minor decisions Rahul, and reduce the errors that influence our decision making.’

‘And that’s the correct decision,’ smiled Rakesh.

Pro Tip: Be aware of the way we fool ourselves with our defensive thinking patterns. When things go wrong, be truthful and realistic. It helps you to recover quickly and also to make better decisions in future.

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