The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of stari

The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of staring down the cookie, they transform it into something with less of a throbbing pull on them. Adults can use similar methods of distraction and distancing ... When a waiter offers chocolate mousse, imagine that a cockroach has just crawled across it. It sounds a lot like something we often call "cognitive dissonance" in other contexts. It's easy to imagine that this sort of self-deception is an important foundational part of a lot of belief systems and zealotry of all stripes. The more you try to change a believer's mind with facts, the harder they concentrate on the imaginary cockroach that just crawled across the mousse. It could help explain why people who are very effective at changing the world around them are often also profoundly irrational believers in something, completely resistant to facts; the same basic disciplinary mechanism underlies both zeal and self-discipline.