What I learned about changing my mind
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The past decade brought some serious changes into my life - a thyroid disorder, difficulty waking up in the morning, a few gray hairs, a move across the world and a widened reading list. But the thing that feels as if it has changed the most significantly is my mind. There are so many things I changed my mind about over the past ten years, and if I am honest - some of them were things I was pretty sold on. If you had told twenty-something-year-old me that there were certain thoughts and beliefs that I would let go of in favour of new ones, I would not have believed you.
It is not my intention to tell you all of the things I have changed my mind about over the past decade. I have written about many of them, and I will link to a number of the posts at the end of this one. But suffice to say - I changed my mind a LOT, and far more importantly, I became open to the idea of changing my mind.
When I entered the last decade, I was pretty sure about many of the things that I knew and believed, and they seemed pretty sound. I didn’t think I had a lot to change my mind about, and I was pretty comfortable in my view of the world. However, as the years rolled by, it became clear to me that there was so much I didn’t know - so much we all didn’t know. Some of the things that I learned as facts - in secondary school and even in university - have been called into question as technology has demonstrated how limited our collective knowledge has been, and continues to call into question the things we think we know. Some of the things I believed from my faith to things I believed about my own abilities were stretched beyond recognition - in good and terrible ways. I have so many more questions than answers now - and I didn’t even use to like unanswered questions! (I still don’t…) These days, I am less focused on answering the question, and more focused on asking better questions. And these days, I am still continuing to learn and to change my mind, or at the very least expand it around ideas, and so-called “facts”. Here are 3 key things I learned that allowed me to change my mind so much over the last decade.
I could be wrong. One of the books that I am currently reading is “A More Beautiful Question - The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas” by Warren Berger. He talks about the power of inquiry, and something that he stresses is that in order to be able to think critically, you need to be able to be wrong. By becoming better at accepting that I could be wrong about something (and sometimes even assuming that I am wrong) I was able to open myself up to other possibilities and see the logic or the evidence for new ideas. If there is one thing I have observed over the years (in others as well as myself) it is so hard to let go of entrenched beliefs, and sometimes the idea that I was wrong was terrifying. There is something scary about facing the reality that you are wrong about the things that you fundamentally believe - because it feels like you are losing your identity, and that can be very difficult to cope with. Sometimes it is hard to embrace being wrong, because it brings with it the fear of isolation from a family or community that is tied together by a common belief. I definitely had that feeling when my beliefs around my faith began to change. It made me ask the question “who am I?” I wondered who I was without those beliefs or without the community that I had built up. And even now, I still don’t have a satisfactory answer, but by getting to a place where I was ok with being wrong, I became much more able to sit in the discomfort that came along with not having a made up mind about faith, and having more questions than answers, and this has also applied to other areas of my life. Being able to be wrong allowed me to change my mind, and in some cases to change it back. It allowed me to be open, and that brings me to my second point.
I could be open. Once I became better at allowing myself to be wrong, the next step was the ability to be open - to new information, to different ways of doing things, and to throwing some opinions out altogether, and embracing new ones. Being open doesn’t mean that I agree with or embrace all beliefs and opinions that come my way. I can still make decisions about what I believe or agree with, and what I don’t. What being open did mean for me was increased compassion and empathy for those who had different beliefs or practices to mine, and it allowed me to see what I had in common with people who appeared different from me, meaning that I have been able to build some great connections over the years with people that I might have clashed with previously because we didn’t have the same beliefs.
I understood that it was ok to change my mind. This is probably the biggest thing I learned during this time, and something that I wish I had known when I was younger. Sometimes I think that I received (or perceived) mixed messages about being able to change my mind. I somehow thought that valuing loyalty, commitment and perseverance meant that changing my mind wasn’t an option - once I began a particular course of action, I needed to see it through to the (sometimes bitter) end. I believed that there was no honor in an unfinished task, and I often felt shame when I changed my mind, or didn’t finish what I started. In addition, I was afraid. I feared being called fickle and indecisive. I feared not appearing committed. I worried about being a quitter, and being seen as a quitter. Being seen as unreliable, and having people not believe or support me when I made a decision or started something because deep down they didn’t believe in my ability to finish what I started. And in all fairness, I put some of this judgement on myself. But I realize now that it can be an act of bravery to change my mind, and not cowardice or laziness. I have no desire to hold fast to beliefs or actions in the face of new information. I no longer see quitting something that isn’t aligned or that isn’t working as being fickle. And if I can’t decide about continuing on a particular path, I take a break. I get up and walk away from the table and come back later to see if I am going to dedicate my time and energy to finishing it. I reserve the right to change my mind, and sometimes I won’t have a “good reason”. I value my time and energy, and if I realize that a particular thought, belief or course of action is a drain on those resources, I reserve the right to choose something else. And the truth is - I sometimes grieve those times when I changed my mind, those lost opportunities, and sometimes lost connections. Sometimes it is hard to give up the things that feel like a part of us - even when they aren’t serving us. But that doesn’t change the fact for me that it is ok to change my mind. I will often face consequences, but I always remind myself - it is ok to change my mind.
The more I became ok with changing my mind, the more I realized - I like having my thoughts provoked and questioned. I like new ideas and concepts. When I question what I believe, and the course of action I take because of it, sometimes it becomes stronger and more robust. Other times, it is dismantled. And as the decade progressed, I became more and more comfortable with the discomfort of an unanswered question. I changed my mind about things I believed, about things I started, about relationships. Sometimes it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. Other times it was terrifying. And I did it anyway.
I recently read a book called “What Alice Forgot” by Liane Moriarty, and I featured it in one of my “What’s on my shelf” blog posts in 2019. It perfectly encapsulates how I felt when I considered the person I am in 2020 and the life I am living in comparison to what I was doing in 2010. Here is an excerpt from it, you can read the post in entirety here.
I won’t give away the story, but this book is about a lady named Alice who woke up one day after hitting her head and could not remember the last 10 years of her life. It is a story about life, about families, and about time.
It got me thinking - what would happen if I woke up and forgot the last 10 years of my life, and the 31 year old version of myself found herself here in 2019. I wonder what would confuse me most of all. Would it be that the guy from the American version of the Apprentice was running the USA? Would I wonder where all the DVD’s disappeared to? Why my phone was the size of a small TV? Why everything hurt all the time?! The book was definitely a reminder to me that a lot can change in ten years - even though it may not feel that way while we are living in it. It reminded me of an interesting truth - that as time goes by each individual experience we have can chip away at us and gradually erode away certain parts of us, while adding on other aspects until we become unrecognizable versions of ourselves.
That is what time does to us - time and experiences. With each experience we are changed into a slightly different version of ourselves. And that without awareness or intention, we may change into someone we might walk right past in the streets. I learned a hard lesson several years ago when I was faced with the tragic death of a friend - I could not truly predict how I would react in any given situation - how I would respond, how it would affect me. There were so many other factors working on that. Sometimes something can happen to us and we are strong and resilient and connected. But let that same thing happen when we are exposed and isolated, and we will react in an entirely different way. It taught me to be more compassionate towards others, and to myself - when we took actions that we didn’t think we would take - and this book was a reminder of that for me. And the other lesson: that came from something Alice said towards the end of the book. When she was able to look at her memories - her life over the previous ten years - as facts without all of the emotion wrapped up into it, she was able to untangle it and ultimately create massive shifts. It reminded me of how much our emotion can cloud the reality of something - especially if we don’t have a healthy way of managing our emotions - by expressing and feeling them.
So tell me - how do you feel about changing your mind? How do you feel about being wrong? What is one thing you used to believe that you no longer believe? How has changing your mind made your life better?
I would love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below! And I bring you big love from a small island.
PS - here are some posts where I wrote about times that I changed my mind:
PPS here is something I was wrong about recently - I thought there was only one type of sunflower!! I discovered another kind above in the beautiful Kenilworth Castle