IT 'SEEMS' DISSONANT
"It just doesn't 'feel right'." "It's not me."
Defined: A condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from inconsistency between one's beliefs and/or one's actions, such as opposing the slaughter of animals and eating meat or trying to reconcile a new belief or behavior with an old belief or behavior.
When something doesn't "feel right" (which is actually a thought, first), there is an emotion generated. An emotion is an "urge" to act in some way. Such emotions are evaluated as unpleasant or pleasant, which will generate an "experience" for you. The old urge will tend to act in the opposite direction to what you now want to do instead.
There is no mystery to this. There is no secret force that will keep you from doing what you decide what to do. There is only "habit" and a temporary emotion that will gradually disappear into nothingness.
EXAMPLES
If you have ridden your horse down the same route for a long time but you've decided to take a new route that is clear in your mind, your horse will tend to keep going the same route and you then will have to override that and then do the new route often enough that the horse is trained anew.
The 'horse' is your primitive mind (which has "horse sense", a very low thinking type of sense based on the past). The primitive mind has a mental pattern wired into it, based on the effects of having done something in the past - and that mental pattern will pop up any time you are doing something similar. Since a mental pattern has actions within it, the old action will tend to be done - but you are trying to do the new action now - so there will be a conflict of actions.
Another example is being an American driver in Bermuda, where they drive on the left side of the road. Though you know that is what you are to do, your "instincts" (actually mental patterns, not really instincts) will have you tending to turn right when you should turn left when going into a traffic circle - it's an interesting "struggle" - and you may have a clash of your 'instinctual' behavior with reality - and reality always wins. (Most people's 'troubles' happen when they believe something is true but reality clashes with it, producing an undesirable result - yet they continue to believe! It seems pretty apparent that the belief should be changed to what is real or the person will keep 'losing to reality'.)
DON'T GIVE UP TOO SOON - IT IS SIMPLY A CONFLICT OF PATTERNS, NOTHING MORE!
Your mental "struggles" are no different than these behavioral examples. An old belief and/or an old behavior will tend to be natural since you've practiced it. Sometimes people will give up early on because they just can't seem to do the new belief or behavior during the 'struggle' (conflict) phase. Then they'll irrationally conclude that they just can't do the new belief or new behavior. They can, but it takes practice so that the new belief, thought, route, or behavior becomes natural and stronger than the old behavior and the brain in actuality is "rewired"
See Managing The Elephant (your thinking brain as the rider of your primitive brain, which operates like an elephant).
