8 published lessons with this tag.
Multiple schemas can apply to the same situation and the one that wins shapes your response.
The discomfort of a failing schema is data not damage.
When two ideas contradict each other, both cannot be fully true in the same sense — the tension between them is informative, not a problem to suppress.
Changing a deeply held mental model is uncomfortable — expect and accept this.
When two of your beliefs conflict, the contradiction itself tells you something important. It reveals that your knowledge has grown beyond the neat consistency of a closed system and is encountering the productive tensions that drive genuine understanding. The discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs is not a problem to eliminate — it is a signal to investigate.
The gap between what you say you value and what you actually do is the most important contradiction to examine.
Living with unexamined contradictions creates cognitive dissonance that drains energy. The cost is not the contradiction itself but the sustained effort of holding incompatible commitments without examining them — a tax on every decision, every plan, and every moment of self-reflection that touches the unresolved conflict.
Resolving contradictions often requires updating one or both of the schemas involved. The contradiction is not a flaw in reality — it is a flaw in the model. And the resolution is not choosing a side. It is evolving the schema until the contradiction dissolves into a more accurate representation of how things actually work.