Purple Cats

This writing aims to help you break free from limiting beliefs and unwanted behaviours by providing an easy to understand fundamental framework of self-inquiry. 

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Let's wind back time. 

 

Back to when you were a new born little baby. 

 

The whole world is new to your fresh little eyes. Even language is a total mystery to you. 

 

The fact that cats, let alone any non human animals exist, is absolutely inconceivable... 

 

Until you see one with your own eyes!

 

Maybe you have a cat at home, so you see the "real thing" quite quickly... or maybe you don't, and instead, you meet your first cat in the 2-dimensional world of a story book that mommy reads to you as a bedtime story. 

 

That first time someone says the word "cat", you associate it with a bunch of possibilities, unless it's clear that the cat is being pointed to and you're being told "it's a cat!"

 

Over time, you start to connect the dots between what your parents say and you grasp the essence of the concept of a "cat". 

 

In parallel at the same time, the same thing happens with colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, white. All of these concepts start to make more and more sense to you, an experientially, you realise that there are a lot of shades that can be labelled with every different colour word!

 

With all this time passing, and all this experience you gain, you realise that your understanding is getting sharper and sharper. You can do more and more things, and you've also experienced more feelings. 

 

From pains of falling down, burning or cutting yourself accidentally... to the pleasures and joys of belly-bursting laughter, sweet treats, and watching TV shows!

 

Fast forward a bit more and by now, you've seen loads of cats. You've seem them in pictures, you've seen them in videos, you've heard of them in stories, and you've seen them in real life. And as your curiosity grew, your desire to name them and understand both their breeds and the colours they come in has also grown.

 

You've also seen more and more cats by now, and in your mind, understanding, and mental landscape, you know intuitively what it means when a cat is "tortoiseshell", "tabby", "cream", "blue-gray", or "bicolour". 

 

But you've never ever seen a Purple Cat. It's not even a concept that one could possibly exist in reality. It's like a cat made of fur that shows a rainbow colour pattern. 

 

You could draw it, possibly... but it wouldn't mean you'd ever see one in real life. In fact, because you've never seen one, and because everyone in your universe tells you they don't exist, you have a firm belief that in fact, they don't exist. 

 

Until that day. 

 

The day you see one, in real life. One that you can touch.

 

One that has every other characteristics of the cats you've ever seen before, plus the fact that it's purple. Incredible!

 

This experience literally shatters your mental model of cats. You go from being a firm believer in the non-existence of Purple Cats, to actually being open to the possibility that even Rainbow Cats might exist. It doesn't matter if you ever see one or not - your belief has fundamentally changed. 

 

And, in psychology, that's exactly how the ideas of cognitive dissonance and contradictory evidence works.

 

It's uncomfortable to have a certain worldview (one without Purple Cats) and find out that in reality, truth is different. When you hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, it does the same. 

 

The way you solve that is to change your beliefs in order to reduce the inconsistencies.

 

We may believe that we value "health", but as we observe our actions, we are not as healthy as we'd like to be. In cases like this, there are two ways you can solve the cognitive dissonance of inconsistency. 

 

The obvious one is to change your behaviour to be in alignment with the healthy standard you envision.

 

The less obvious one is to justify the inconsistency by believing in your excuses (such as "I'm not being *that* unhealthy", "I don't have time", or "this is actually normal").

 

When your behaviours are not as you'd like them to be, start by realising that you don't know everything - you can't, it's impossible - and being open to the possibility that there is something that you don't know which is maybe getting in the way of behaving as you'd ideally like to. 

 

In the cat metaphor, this is the belief that "purple cats might exist" even though you've never seen one.

 

And you can explore the world seeking to find the purple cats related to the beliefs and unwanted behaviours that you want to change. As you explore, you are in the same process as the child discovering more and more "types" and "colours" of cats exist. 

 

This is the basic motivator of curiosity - the desire to understand yourself and the world. 

 

Ask questions, listen to podcasts, read books on the subject. Every one of those things you do helps "pave" the way (and the build the brain circuits) towards having a more and more accurate model of the world in your mind. The more accurate your model of the world, the more you can pinpoint where exactly you were programmed to hold beliefs that are "not true", or simply that "don't work for you" anymore. 

 

Change your belief at the root, and then the symptoms of their limitations or the unwanted behaviour patterns at the surface will stop.

 

Although this method is great and works well, there can be an issue which means that it may not guarantee that your problem will be solved. 

 

The issue is that it's a very "conscious mind" approach, and with that, there are two points. One is there can be conscious resistance that arises in the face of cognitive dissonance, and the other is that some beliefs are so deeply held within the subconscious mind that it's going to take a lot more (subconscious) work to change it. This is the domain of healing, therapy, and emotional work (broadly); however, this conscious mind approach is a good place to start because often beliefs have both a conscious and an unconscious component to them. Starting with curiosity, education, and applying this knowledge reduces the uncertainty about how much of your surface level problem is due to conscious vs subconscious.

 

There is no "one" right approach that can be prescribed for anyone, only trends that work for widely varying groups of people with their (even more widely) varying belief systems and world views. 

 

There are many more mechanisms of breaking free from limiting beliefs and unwanted behaviours - some are awareness based (meditation, for example), some are habit (repetition) based, some are motivation or identity based (spending more time observing and being with role models who have achieved what you'd like to achieve), and some are directly reprogramming based (therapy and coaching for example). All methods differ in their triggers and mechanisms.

 

By combining different approaches tailored to your mindset, you can create lasting change with minimal effort.

 

The most important thing is to keep going - all the while keeping the open-mindedness of belief ("Purple Cats *may* exist" even if you've never seen one) and the desire to explore ("see if you can find one")!

 

No doubt, you will find what works for YOU eventually. 

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