Right To Change Your Mind To Grow

Changing your mind does not mean moving away from your essence. It means realizing that the people we trusted are unreliable, realizing that the path that seemed right to us wasn’t that good, and it means, above all, being able to move forward with greater perspective and maturity. So, let’s never forget that each of us has the precious right to change our minds in order to grow.

It may seem curious but, around us, there is never a lack of someone who sees with skepticism the fact that, in a given moment, we act or think differently. Usually, such a thing surprises our family members, upsets our partner, or scares our friends. How is it possible that now you like “green” if before you were a fan of “blue”?

Indeed, it is. We now prefer green, red or cobalt blue because, suddenly, we realized that there are more colors in life than we were taught. We have even discovered that there are shades that give us much more, flavors that awaken our senses and smells, corners and scenarios that are truly stimulating and satisfying.

Changing your mind is not a sacrilege nor does it transform us into fickle or unstable people. What’s more, people who are able to open their minds, to be receptive to new stimuli and who, moreover, are open to change when they see fit, are very responsible types with respect to their personal growth.

People with an open mind aren’t afraid to change their minds

People who change their minds lightly and for no reason cause us mistrust. It is normal, it is not easy to live with someone who today tells us one thing and then does another, with someone who defends a series of values ​​to the bitter end and the next day rejects them and opts for others that are completely opposite. But we are not referring to this dynamic in this article.

Rather, we are referring to that capacity that we should all put into practice: change aimed at enabling human development. In this sense, being able to change our opinion on a topic, behavior or conception we have of a specific person often becomes like a door to allow our best progress, our only opportunity to take more convenient perspectives and approaches.

A few years ago, social psychologists Ian Handley and Dolores Albar published an interesting study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on our resistance to changing points of view. This research highlights an incredibly revealing fact: People with good self-esteem and who feel good about themselves have a more open mind and are much more receptive to change. They are also not afraid to change their minds and make it clear why they do it.

Heuristics that act as our inner voice

This finding has to do with what other psychologists, such as Melissa Finucane and Paul Slovic, called “affective heuristics”. Profiles with a more flexible and open to experience vital approach usually make decisions through mental shortcuts that draw directly from emotions, or rather from their “instinct”.

Their baggage in self-knowledge is so advanced that they have a “sensor” (or an inner voice) capable of alerting them when certain things are not convenient, or when certain ideals, companies or concepts must be discarded because they create disharmony, dissatisfaction or unhappiness.

For their part, people who are most reluctant to change their mind or approach use more sophisticated, but less emotional, heuristics. Only in this way can they raise walls to invalidate everything that dares to challenge their preconceived ideas.

The right to change your mind

We have the right to change our minds, to stop admiring someone without making us feel bad. Well yes, it is our right that now we like that subject, that pastime or that branch of knowledge that we previously criticized, perhaps because we had not had the courage to approach it to discover all the potential it had to give us.

Sometimes, changing your mind means growing, allowing us to open new doors by closing others behind us to advance with greater competence and safety. None of this is negative or makes us worse people, quite the opposite.

That said, there is a fact in each of these steps that we cannot put aside.

Anyone who changes their mind about something or someone has done a self-reflection exercise before. That is, he allowed himself to resort to one of those affective heuristics mentioned to remember his essence, awaken his instincts and his emotional needs.

Therefore, no one should make changes lightly or change their minds only on a whim. We must do it with certainty, with the certainty that there are things that no longer need to be defended as there are more valid and satisfying alternatives.

Let’s think about it and stop being so afraid of changes, be they big or small.