The Overconfidence trap: Why you might be mistaking awareness for understanding.
FREE Ebook
||| Why Knowing Isn't Enough
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FREE Ebook ||| Why Knowing Isn't Enough 〰️
Subtitle: The Knowledge myth
Series: Busting myths
“For those who know what to do, but struggle to do it consistently”. This is stated boldly on my homepage. But let me challenge you a bit. Do you actually know and understand what to do about your health or do you just have an awareness of the behavior? Because, these two determine the outcome of the behavior change you desire. Let’s get into it.
As a dietitian, I’ve had my fair share of creating Health Awareness resources. From social media posts to conferences and community outreaches, in Africa and the western world, rural and urban areas. But one question lingers on my mind. We’ve been creating awareness on nutrition related diseases, healthy lifestyles and so on. Yet, the number of people suffering from these conditions keeps rising. As a matter of fact, The Healthy People 2030 set to reduce the prevalence of Childhood obesity from 17.8% to 15.5% by 2030, but as of now, the prevalence has increased to 19.7%. Governments across the world spend lots of money funding research aimed at improving this outcome, yet it only gets worse. Why?
Because these research projects have a primary goal. To create awareness. Awareness is easily measured and achieved, providing the needed evidence for bigger funding opportunities. While this is not inherently bad, it has led to another crisis— accessible health information. I agree that awareness is the first step toward behavior change. But awareness without deeper understanding makes knowledge powerless. The reason is knowledge is only powerful when it can be applied. Nonetheless, application can’t materialize without deeper understanding. That’s why many people are running around with the idea of knowledge but all they have is an illusion. So my question becomes: is extreme access to health information a blessing or a curse?
If this is hitting a little too close, I’d love to send you my Free book on Turning health knowledge into action:
Ever found yourself reading a piece of health advice and thinking, “Yeah, I already know that”? There’s been several instances where I sat down with a patient for so long, educating them on topics they assumed were basic knowledge. Patients have challenged me with information from a simple google search on a random website with no credibility. Thanks to the internet, everyone is a doctor. Online health information has become so saturated that genuine medical advice feels completely trite. But here is the real danger. Since we are constantly exposed to massive amounts of health data, we confuse familiarity with deep understanding. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect where constant exposure to health information creates an exaggerated confidence, making you feel like an expert. As a result, genuine health advice now lacks the emotional weight to trigger behavior change. Without that emotional trigger, you lack the psychological drive required to break old patterns and sustain difficult, long-term behavior changes.
It’s just like a student passing a written exam by rote learning but struggling with practical questions. If they had understood the concept instead of memorizing, then regardless of the situation, it would still be applicable. This is because awareness answers the “whats” and understanding answers the “whys and hows”. For instance, what behavior do I need to change, why do I need to change and how do I change and remain consistent. This creates the process of execution. From understanding, translation, activation, regulation and finally, sustained execution. Now, you’ll realize there is a critical layer between knowledge acquisition and execution. So knowing better doesn’t always mean doing better. The next time you read a piece of health advice and find yourself thinking you know already, take a step back. There is a massive difference between reading a headline and changing a habit.
Final Insight
Now, before you assume you know what to do about your health, make sure you actually know and understand.With the over-saturated health content available, you’ll need a little more than a simple google search. Go deeper. Question the source of information, ask about the rationale behind the diet plan or workout routine, learn the benefits and side effects, explore alternatives, manage expectations, and most importantly adjust to suit your lifestyle. With this in mind, if you’re struggling to change a particular behavior and stay consistent, the problem may not be a lack of motivation or discipline, you probably don’t have the full understanding of what you’re doing yet. And solving that might be more beneficial than you think.
Reflection
Pick one behavior you’re trying to change.
Write down why you need to change
Write three things you know about the behavior and cross check with current scientific evidence by doing the following: it’ll only take about 10-20minutes but it’s worth it.
Go to a peer-reviewed scientific research website like PubMed, Cochran library, Google Scholar.
Enter the name of the behavior as a keyword. For example, exercise, physical activity, obesity, etc.
Download three articles.
Use any AI of your choice to summarize the article for you.
Ask questions.
A better alternative is to ask your healthcare provider for more details on your treatment plan.
“I can’t wait for the next release”
If you’ve ever felt like you’re the problem, this will help you see what’s actually happening. I ‘d love to send you the full breakdown of the Framework: Understanding the Knowledge to Action Gap