How To Know Whether to Change Your Attitude or Your Behavior

To understand how these both affect us we need to start by defining them. Our attitude is the way we think. It refers to our morals and our values. This should guide our behavior.

The behavior is the action that we do and the choices that we make. The clash between our attitude and our behavior is called cognitive dissonance. This means that we take part in a behavior that does not go along with our attitude or our beliefs.

Since cognitive dissonance is mental tension which makes it uncomfortable, our brain is programmed to unconsciously stop it by changing one of these.

We tend to change our attitude because we normally have already shown the behavior we are against. This happens by justifying our actions to not feel guilty. Our behavior comes second only when we are making choices. Also if we stop and recognize we are suffering from cognitive dissonance and acknowledge that we just change our attitude, we can do the right thing and stop for a second.

This allows us to analyze our thoughts and although we already did the action, prevent it next time by having a better attitude. The best example of this is smoking.

We might justify it with a phrase like “I am young” If you stop yourself when doing this next time you get to choose whether to keep changing your attitude or control your behavior.

You can know which one to do with these next 4 questions:

1. How does the problem relate to me? 

We need to ask ourselves how does this problem affects us. Would it affect us in an emotional or physical way?

Is it something related to our health? We need to find the source and type of problem we are dealing with in order to ask yourself the next questions.

I am still going to use the smoker example because it is the most simple. In this case, smoking would go in the health section. It also includes mental health because it creates an addiction.

2. Does it affect others?

The next step is to search for the impact of this decision we are making in other people’s lives.

Am I hurting someone by making this choice? Does it affect someone else more than it affects me? If it does there is probably a chance that the behavior that you are about to pursue is in the wrong and instead of justifying it by changing your attitude you change your behavior.

In the smoker situation let’s say you are a mother and you are wondering if you should quit smoking. In this case, you need to think about how does it affects your family. Will this have a negative impact on my child?

3. Is the change in behavior beneficial to me?

If I stop doing this will it bring me joy? Stopping this behavior is going to ultimately be beneficial to me?

Maybe stopping the behavior won’t bring you joy at first, but when you notice the difference in yourself it will.

When talking about the mother that smokes you know that this behavior is not beneficial for her, it affects her health. It might bring her joy and peace but just momentarily. Let’s say the behavior you are engaging with is cheating on ane exam.

Is it beneficial to you? Well maybe you will get a good grade, but you need to think beyond that. Will it help you become a better person? Will it bring you guilt? Are you learning something this way?

4. Is changing the attitude going to allow me to engage in behaviors that I previously knew were bad for me?

If we ultimately choose to change our attitude and not our behavior we need to consider how will it affect us.

Are we fomenting an addiction? The conclusion that we are trying to reach is whether we want to change our attitude or our behavior when having a reflection about our choices.

Another example could be that we are trying to choose to which university we want to go and we’re about to choose option A. We stop for a second and consider, am I changing my attitude about the fact that it’s in a dangerous city just because I like the party life of the university?

Is this going to be a serious problem for me? Maybe it will allow you to engage in behavior that you had previously left behind. That is why we should always consider our past and ask ourselves if what we are doing is recurring to past behavior.

We need to acknowledge when we are bringing up past habits.

If you are having trouble having a positive mindset check out this Ultimate Positive Mindset Guide 2020

This is especially necessary now that we are closed of at home and can’t find anything to be positive about with this pandemic.

Final choices

The whole point of this reflection is doing what is best for you. This train of thought is perfect when making important life choices and for when you justify your decisions.

Try recurring to it when your path in life is not clear. I hope these tips are useful to you and you get to make the right choices that are best for you.

Remember to not be hard on yourself and learn to acknowledge your bad decisions.