One of the most important functions of the human mind is to help us make sense of the world around us: in our minds, we create representations that becomes our own perception of reality. Normally, this is quite positive and healthy. The problem arises when the mind attempts to fill in the gaps in understanding in a manner that does not correspond to actual reality. The total of our perception includes both fact and fiction, and even the facts are based on our limited experience and from an individual perspective.
Moreover, the mental representation of reality attempts to be accurate and consistent and resists the notion that it may be incorrect. For example, when someone asks why made a decision, you answer immediately - but this extemporaneous answer is often inaccurate. You may not remember the reasons that were in your mind at the time, if you were ever fully conscious of all the reasons that influenced your decision. But the mind fabricates a plausible set of motivations that are consistent with the mental representation of reality.
And to conserve energy, the mind makes assumptions about reality that may be inaccurate. In so doing, it often reinterprets facts that seem to be of little consequence to create a consistent conception. This happens automatically, and people fall into habitual patterns of decision-making and then attempt to apply those patterns even when they are inappropriate to a given situation.
To change the pattern, these habits must be disrupted: the perception of reality needs to be changed. The problem is: the mind doesn't want to be changed. Its preference is to maintain its current settings and do what it usually does, generally because the habitual patterns were established as habit because they have been successful in the past. It maybe a black-or-white perspective, but our tendency is to sort things into opposites: anything that does not match "success" will be "failure" and anything that is not "helpful" will be "harmful." We do not immediately consider whether it may be more successful or more helpful, merely that it is different to the known and must therefore be its diametric opposite.
Emotion is the first line of defense for the human mind. Before we think about something, we feel it, and our thinking is generally inclined to defend its ingrained successful habits against any suggestion to the contrary. By some theories, emotions are the default procedures of the human mind - established by a rational process, but rather hasty and superficial in nature.
Putting the two together, an unfamiliar option constitutes a threat to success that has the potential to be harmful and such a threat activates very primitive emotions that trigger the fight/flight survival mechanisms that defend against threats. When dealing with ideas, the physical fight/flight becomes resistance or avoidance, which is then justified in arrears by the reasoning processes.
This is not to say that the human mind is incapable of change - of pausing to consider the new information, and questioning the habitual ways of thinking. However, that is not the default response. We generally reconsider our way of thinking when we recognize something is different about the current situation - but our first inclination is to match the current situation to experience and dismiss the cues that would enable us to recognize the differences.
In order to learn, change, or grow, it is necessary to have these instances of uncertainty - and instead of automatically falling back on habitual reactions, to pause and question whether these habitual reactions are appropriate to the situation at hand and consider whether there might be better options. This requires setting aside the initial emotional reaction to be guided by a more rational process.
This can be uncomfortable - and as such is typically avoided. And this is part of the reason that people fall into patterns of decision-making and patterns of acting that merely apply familiar habits, regardless of whether they match to a present decision.
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