That is so true. This is why I say self-honesty is the MAIN issue for most people, and for most of the things that are bringing us down in life.
The painful truth is generally speaking, we already know what we need to do to change it ... And we do indeed spend a lot of energy (intellectual pursuit) talking ourselves out of it.
This is an example of when sometimes it's better to just believe in an ideal rather than wait until the day you finally feel it's been proved to you, or you've proved it to yourself. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people who have things in their life that should be changed for their own good and the good of those around them ... that day will never come, because in many cases we have programmed ourselves or been programmed to continue rationalizing the continuance of it.
The whole point of accumulating knowledge in a civilized world - the whole reason, the whole value - is because each generation can "stand on the shoulders" of the last one. Instead of spending 74 years out of your 75 year life deciding to figure everything out for yourself by having questioned everything, and then spending the last one executing on your knowledge, you can benefit from accepting a certain amount of traditional knowledge and only questioning a small % of it, or questioning the small % that might be unique to your situation.
One of the problems in today's world is the "question everything" and "reinvent everything" mentality that has saturated the younger people.
If each generation tries to figure everything out from scratch, there is nothing left over for profit and enjoyment.
It took me too many years to realize this, but when I did, I was glad I got is settled in my mind at a certain age rather than a later age.
Believe your elders. Save your energy from reinventing everything, as by the time you realize your elders were right 99% of the time, your entire life will be nothing but a heap of regret. One lifetime isn't enough time to re-discover 1000 years of learning from scratch. Humility is required to follow others' suggestions.