Two Minds Blog

If motivation is what gets us to change our behavior, it seems that ambivalence might be what keeps us stuck -- the opposite of being motivated. But motivational interviewing practitioners are taught to look for ambivalence and use it as a source of motivation for change. Last time I wrote about how ambivalence can occur within both the Intuitive and the Narrative minds, rather than representing a conflict between them. But more than that, motivational interviewing suggests that the experience of ambivalence is what drives us forward. How can ambivalence be a good thing? The experience of ambivalence is an uncomfortable one for most people. An intention-behavior gap  is the natural consequence of having two separate mental systems, one of which controls our verbal intentions and explanations (the Narrative mind), and the other one of which controls our behavior (the Intuitive mind). If someone were a pathological liar, they might not be concerned about intention-behavior gaps at ...

  Ambivalence -- the experience of feeling two ways about changing your behavior -- is a core aspect of the human experience. This post is the first in a two-part series about what ambivalence is and what it has to do with motivation. In Two Minds Theory we talk about "intention-behavior gaps" that arise between the Narrative mind's statements about the future and the Intuitive mind's selection of behaviors in the present: The gap arises because of a fundamental difference in immediacy between the mental system that controls language and the one that controls actual behavior. And in motivational interviewing , a counselor's fundamental goal is to "explore and resolve ambivalence." Ambivalence is sometimes seen as a problem  to be solved, but it's helpful instead to think about ambivalence as just a part of being human. The less we blame ourselves for feeling ambivalence, the easier it becomes for us to work through it in order to select one course of...