The Stubbornness Trap
We live in a culture that prizes consistency. A leader who changes their position is called a flip-flopper. A person who abandons a long-held belief is suspected of weakness or opportunism. We've come to equate firmness with integrity — and changing one's mind with some kind of failure.
But this framing has it exactly backwards. Refusing to update your beliefs in the face of new evidence isn't strength — it's intellectual stubbornness. And it quietly limits your growth, your relationships, and your ability to navigate an ever-changing world.
What Getting Things Wrong Actually Means
Think about a belief you held five years ago that you no longer hold. Maybe it was about relationships, politics, food, work, or yourself. Did abandoning that belief make you weaker? Almost certainly not. It probably made you more nuanced, more capable, more aligned with reality.
Being wrong, and then updating, is how knowledge actually works. It's how science works. It's how wisdom accumulates. The alternative — holding the same views forever regardless of experience — is a kind of stagnation that masquerades as principle.
Why Changing Our Minds Is Hard
The difficulty is real, and worth taking seriously. Several psychological forces work against updating our beliefs:
- Identity fusion: When we've held a belief for a long time, it becomes part of how we see ourselves. Changing it feels like losing part of who we are.
- Sunk cost thinking: If I've argued this position publicly for years, admitting I was wrong means all that arguing was wasted.
- Social belonging: Our beliefs often signal which group we belong to. Changing them can feel like a betrayal — or like risking exclusion.
- Confirmation bias: We instinctively notice evidence that supports what we already believe and discount evidence that challenges it.
Knowing these forces exist doesn't neutralize them, but it does make them easier to catch in action.
A Process for Updating Beliefs Well
- Separate the belief from your identity. You are not your opinions. You hold them, but they're not you. This one mental move makes updating far less threatening.
- Ask what would change your mind. If you can't answer this question, you're not holding a belief — you're holding an identity marker, and that's worth knowing.
- Seek out the strongest version of opposing views. Steelman, don't strawman. Engaging with a caricature of a different position confirms nothing.
- Give yourself permission to be uncertain. "I'm not sure yet" is an underrated position that's often the most honest.
- Celebrate your updates privately, at least. When you change your mind, notice it, and treat it as a small victory rather than a defeat.
The Long Game
People who are good at changing their minds tend to be better at most things over time — better at relationships (because they can admit fault), better at careers (because they can adapt), better at understanding the world (because they update their map when the territory changes).
The irony is that being willing to change your mind is what gives your views more credibility, not less. When someone says "I used to believe X, but I changed my mind because Y" — that's a signal of intellectual honesty. It's a reason to trust what they say next.
A Practice Worth Adopting
Once a month, identify one belief you hold — about yourself, your work, the world — and genuinely ask: What evidence would convince me this is wrong? The answer is revealing. And occasionally, it opens a door.