Don’t Be Afraid To Change Your Mind

22 commentsWritten on January 23rd, 2011 by
Categories: life, Opinions, work/career

The ability to reevaluate your position, thoughts or feelings on something is a very valuable asset to posses. There are quite a few people who have issues with this though. How many problems, in any field or situation you can think of, could be avoided if we'd all be able to say "you know what, i was wrong and i no longer feel the same way about it". Or "well, times have changed and my previous position on this no longer makes sense". Yet there are still a lot of people who are afraid to state that they've changed their mind on something they've made strong statements about in the past. I don't know why that is, though i suspect that in most cases it's all about fear of being perceived as weak. After all, if you're smart and strong you're surely quite capable of forming the "right" opinion initially, so there wouldn't be any reason to actually change your mind about it later, right? Right...

An opinion is always formed within a context. There are many things that can influence or form a context, but a lot of them are temporal in nature. Simply put: things change, as do people (to an extent). The reasons behind an opinion of yours are unlikely to remain the same for the rest of your life. Granted, some of them can remain the same, but the majority of them won't. An opinion that was formed within a certain context is thus likely to become invalid sooner or later within the way you look at things.

Obviously, i don't think there's anything wrong with changing your mind about something. It shows that you've given the issue some new thought. An inability to change your mind, even when the context in which the original opinion was formed has changed, shows a few other possibilities. Perhaps you're unable to assess how the situation has changed. Perhaps you don't want to be perceived as weak for changing your position. Or maybe you haven't even gone through the trouble to think about the issue again. Or maybe you have, and you still stand by your opinion. In the latter case, you can at least rationalize why you're sticking to your opinion. In the former 3 cases, you can't and people will only think less of you because of it.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 at 15:54 and is filed under life, Opinions, work/career. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://twitter.com/BenPittoors Ben Pittoors

    “In the former 3 cases, you can’t and people will only think less of you because of it.”

    Those are harsh words… you generalize ‘people’, I consider myself belonging to that group but I learned not to think less of someone for reasons like:

    - being unable to assess how a situation has changed
    - not wanting to be perceived as weak
    - not going through the trouble to think about an issue again

    In any of those cases there might be valid reasons in play that I do not know about.

    Maybe you should rephrase that in:

    “In the former 3 cases, you can’t and shallow people will only think less of you because of it.”

    But then again, who cares if they do… unless you have to deal with them on a daily basis.

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      What can i say… i prefer people who show some depth in the way they think about things over people who don’t. It is of course your prerogative to label that as ‘shallow’ :)

      • http://twitter.com/BenPittoors Ben Pittoors

        that’s right… shallow is not what I ment

        I ment ‘superior’

        • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

          now who’s using harsh words? :)
          surely such a generalization would be beneath you, no?

          And please don’t act like you never feel superior to anyone. I know you well enough to know that that surely isn’t the case :)

          • http://twitter.com/BenPittoors Ben Pittoors

            That wasn’t harsh. You completely discarded this piece of my original comment:

            “In any of those cases there might be valid reasons in play that I do not know about”

            And I admit I do feel superior sometimes but that’s does not make me think less of people for the reasons you specify.

            • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

              so you have other reasons to feel superior to some people… what makes them less ‘bad’ than mine?

              • http://twitter.com/BenPittoors Ben Pittoors

                Me feeling superior, when that happens, probably comes along with a good sense of humor… and it hardly ever means I think less of someone. Those are 2 different things: thinking less of someone and feeling superior. Although sometimes there is a noticeable correlation between them.

                I have different reasons to think less of someone though… that’s true.

                In unrelated news: liking the new comment system on your blog…

                • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

                  sorry, but that sense of humor stuff is a cop out to me

                  • http://twitter.com/BenPittoors Ben Pittoors

                    alright then… humor me:

                    “Me feeling superior, when that happens, hardly ever means I think less of someone. Those are 2 different things: thinking less of someone and feeling superior. Although sometimes there is a noticeable correlation between them.

                    I have different reasons to think less of someone though… that’s true.

                    In unrelated news: liking the new comment system on your blog…”

  • Mark

    A lot of the time it boils down to:

    Arrogance — They genuinely believe they’re superior and won’t change their decision in spite of the evidence. I’ve had to deal with a few people like this in the past and it’s horrible. It degenerates into endless discussions and fruitless presentations of evidence. It’s like trying to argue with a Creationist about fossils; it’s an utter waste of time and causes stress and bad blood to develop.

    Stubbornness — They knows a better solution exists, but they’re too precious, lazy or proud to change things themselves. I occasionally encounter this from people who get a bit too attached to code they’ve written and it’s less of a big deal. At least in this case you can usually head down the, “it’s easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission”, route and improve things yourself.

    Lack of confidence — They think that going back on a decision will make them appear to be weak when, in fact, it just makes them look like they belong in camp #1 (arrogance).

    I’m quite fond of the phrase, “strong opinions, weakly held”. Do things with conviction, but don’t be afraid to change to something better down the road if it makes sense.

  • http://twitter.com/alexsimkin Alex Simkin

    Where is the most interesting part? What did you change your mind about?

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      plenty of things over the years :)

      in the past 6 months alone:
      dynamic vs static typing
      silverlight vs html
      automated testing
      working for a company vs going independent

      • Teasfd

        BTW – Which way did you go RE: dynamic vs static typing?

        • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

          i prefer dynamic typing these days… i enjoy coding in Ruby a lot more than i do in .NET for instance

          but there just isn’t a lot of Ruby work over here (Belgium) so i’m still doing .NET

          • Teasfd

            Interesting. I keep going back and forth ;)

            • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

              i wouldn’t be surprised if i change my mind on that a few more times as well ;)

  • http://twitter.com/stevehorn Steve Horn
    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      that’s probably also a frequently occurring case :)

  • Not A Fan

    In English, we write “I”, not “i”.
    If you fail to do so, your blog will be perceived by some people as being the product of a young adolescent boy that has discovered the internet and posts statements like “omglol i roxxor”, instead of the pseudo-intellectual ramblings of a mad professor Know-It-All for which you seem to desperately try to pose.

    Note that this is a personal opinion and has potential to change based on future postings to your circlejerk blog, however unlikely the possibility for change is, since you must be the great guru you claim to be and are always correct in everything you do or say.
    As you advise, I shall give the issue some new thought by gouging out my eyeballs for reading this drivel.

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      ironically, people who use lame aliases are often associated with young adolescent boys as well

      gotta love teh intarwebs eh?

    • http://twitter.com/peterhoogers Peter Hoogers

      I’ll bite.
      In the real world, no-one really cares about correct capitalization of the first person pronoun “I” on a technology related blog.

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