We say we value growth.
We encourage people to learn. Read more. Travel. Meet different people. Ask questions. Gain experience. Get educated. Listen to perspectives outside of their own.
Presumably, all of that learning is supposed to change something.
And yet, when someone actually changes their mind, we sometimes treat it like we’ve caught them doing something wrong.
Wait. I thought you said…
That’s not what you used to believe.
Oh, so NOW you think…
Yes.
That’s what changing your mind means.
At some point, we started treating consistency of belief like evidence of character.
If you believed something at twenty and still believe it at forty, there’s something about that consistency that sounds admirable. You stood on what you believed. You knew who you were. You didn’t let anybody change you.
But what if twenty years of living gave you information your twenty-year-old self didn’t have?
What if you experienced something instead of simply having an opinion about it?
What if you met people who challenged what you had been taught?
What if you heard an argument you couldn’t intellectually defend yourself against?
What if you simply learned more?
Are you supposed to ignore all of that for the sake of being consistent?
Because if nothing you’ve learned has ever changed your mind, what exactly did the learning change?
That’s the part I find interesting.
We expect education to change what we know.
We expect experience to change what we understand.
We expect age to give us perspective.
We expect relationships to teach us things.
We expect failure to teach us things.
We expect success to teach us things.
But somehow, after absorbing all of this new information, we’re supposed to emerge with exactly the same worldview we had before.
Why?
Nobody thinks it’s strange that you know things today you didn’t know ten years ago.
Nobody expects you to have the same skills at forty that you had at twenty.
Nobody says, “You didn’t know how to do that before. Why do you suddenly know how to do it now?”
That would be ridiculous.
Learning is supposed to leave you different from how it found you.
Why wouldn’t that include your opinions?
Sometimes You Were Just Wrong
There’s another possibility we don’t seem particularly comfortable with.
Sometimes you change your mind because you were wrong.
Not uninformed.
Not misunderstood.
Not taken out of context.
Just wrong.
I have been wrong before.
I fully expect to be wrong again.
That doesn’t mean every belief I hold should be treated like a placeholder until somebody convinces me otherwise. There are things I believe strongly.
But I also have to leave room for the possibility that something I currently believe is based on incomplete information.
That’s not weakness.
That’s intellectual humility.
There’s a difference between saying:
This is what I believe based on what I currently know.
and saying:
This must remain what I believe because I once said it out loud.
The second one isn’t conviction.
Sometimes it’s ego.
We Love Receipts
The internet has made changing your mind even more interesting because now apparently everything you’ve ever said can be resurrected.
Someone can say:
“I’ve changed my position on that.”
And within minutes somebody is digging through posts from 2017.
WELL IN 2017 YOU SAID—
Yes.
That’s why they used the phrase changed my position.
We sometimes seem more interested in proving that someone has been inconsistent than understanding why their thinking changed.
But the reason matters.
Changing your mind because you’ve encountered new evidence isn’t the same thing as changing your story because accountability showed up.
Changing your mind because you’ve reconsidered an issue isn’t the same thing as changing your position every time it becomes socially convenient.
Changing your mind because you’ve grown isn’t the same thing as saying whatever benefits you in the moment.
Consistency can tell us something about a person.
But so can the ability to say:
I used to think that. I don’t anymore. Here’s why.
There can be integrity in changing your mind.
When Beliefs Become Identities
I think changing our minds gets harder as we get older because eventually some of our beliefs stop being things we believe and start becoming descriptions of who we are.
I’m religious.
I’m atheist.
I’m conservative.
I’m progressive.
I’m traditional.
I’m an entrepreneur.
I’m a career woman.
I’m this kind of parent.
I’m this kind of person.
Once a belief becomes attached to identity, questioning the belief can feel like questioning yourself.
And now changing your mind has a price.
What happens if you’ve publicly defended something for ten years?
What happens if you’ve judged other people for believing differently?
What happens if your friends agree with you?
Your family?
Your community?
What happens when changing your mind threatens your sense of belonging?
Now you’re not simply evaluating new information.
You’re potentially renegotiating your identity.
That’s expensive.
Everybody likes the idea of being open-minded until openness threatens something they’ve built part of themselves around.
And maybe that’s why some beliefs become almost impossible to examine.
Not necessarily because the evidence supporting them is so strong.
But because we’ve attached too much of ourselves to the outcome.
You Are Allowed to Audit Your Own Mind
Maybe our beliefs should work a little more like everything else we inherit.
We receive them.
We use them.
We learn from them.
And occasionally, we audit them.
Where did I get this belief?
Why do I believe it?
What evidence supports it?
Would I believe this if I had grown up somewhere else?
Do I still believe it?
And maybe the most uncomfortable question:
What would it take for me to change my mind?
Because if the answer is nothing, if there is no amount of evidence, experience, information, or reasoning that could possibly make you reconsider something, then we’re no longer talking about an opinion you’ve examined.
We’re talking about something you’ve decided must remain true.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Changing Your Mind Isn’t the Goal
I don’t think the answer is to constantly change your opinions.
Someone who adopts a new worldview every time they watch a convincing TikTok isn’t necessarily more open-minded than someone who refuses to reconsider anything.
The goal isn’t instability.
It’s examination.
Hold your beliefs strongly enough to live by them.
But loosely enough to examine them.
Learn.
Question.
Listen.
Defend your position when you believe it deserves defending.
And when the evidence demands something different, be willing to say:
I changed my mind.
Not sheepishly.
Not as a confession.
Not as evidence that you can’t be trusted.
But as evidence that your thinking is still capable of moving.
Because maybe changing your mind isn’t always proof that you were wrong.
Sometimes it’s proof that you were paying attention.
And if nothing you’ve learned has ever changed your mind, what exactly did the learning change?
So here’s something to think about:
What do you believe today that you’re willing to admit you might be wrong about tomorrow?
tianicolespeaks 
Leave a comment