I want you to consider a belief that you hold dear.
It can be a political or religious belief. Really anything that you find yourself discussing or arguing with other people about. It doesn’t matter what the belief is, so much as I want to show you how it was derived, and that, regardless of how you feel about it now, you could benefit from being more fluid in your thinking about not only this, but many of the other things you know or feel are true.
I am not trying to change your opinion on any one thing. I am trying to change your mind overall.
This year, I want to give you the gift of understanding why we hold certain opinions and beliefs and that, no matter our age, we have the freedom and ability to change our minds. While that may seem obvious… “Thanks, Mike, but I know I can change my mind, and I certainly didn’t need your permission to do so…”, we rarely question our beliefs, argue with friends and family, and cling to dogmas that may or may not be true.
I am not going to try to change your mind on any given issue, but I am going to try to explain how you might have come to it, how others came to their own beliefs, and why we all might be arguing over misperceptions and disambiguation.
In simple terms, we are seeing things from different perspectives, and it is very possible that both perspectives are equal parts accurate and inaccurate.
As we get together with our family and the family of our partners, we are bound to run into people who see the world very differently than we do and have opinions that might not agree with our own. When we are more flexible and fluid in how we think, our interactions with others can be more open, honest, and meaningful.
There are many reasons we think or feel the way we do, and we have more control over them than you might think. My plan is to not tell you which side of a position you should take, but rather identify how you came to that position or any position, and show you that belief might not be as ingrained or as accurate as you think, and it isn’t even your fault.
When you think about these tendencies, it should make you less adamant about what you believe and more understanding of people who have different beliefs.
- Our Priors: Every single one of our opinions is predicated on our past beliefs, values, and attitudes. Since everyone has different priors in these categories, it is common that we are far apart on many issues. Growth-minded people tend to re-evaluate and update their priors when faced with new information. Fixed mindset people are much harder to budge. Understanding that disagreements begin at this basic level of perceptual assumptions is important. We need to focus on the “how” and “why” they see what they see, and not the “what”. The challenge here is, that until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right! I work with my clients on how to change minds effectively, and I will eventually write about how that looks in another post, but for now, just know that we do not need to attack viewpoints, but we do need to understand them. I can tell you now that more facts are never the answer. If they think the sky is green, telling or showing them it is blue, isn’t as effective as you think. However, understanding what brought them to that belief in the first place, is the key to invoking change.
- We are wired to protect ourselves first and foremost, and our brains consider our thoughts and feelings to be part of ourselves. When we are challenged on a topic, we initiate a fight or flight response, and we have a need to be right. Unfortunately, this lizard-brain mentality often forgoes reasonability in favor of protecting our ego. More often than not, people who hold on to beliefs too tightly will choose to be right over being reasonable. When new information does not fit into our safe box of values and beliefs, we are stuck in cognitive dissonance (when your beliefs do not line up with your actions or feelings), trying to force square thought pegs into round holes. Eventually, we can train ourselves to go from assimilation (the process of taking in new ideas) to accommodation (acceptance, or the adjustment of your focus..this is where our minds change) faster but that is a skill that we have to work on. Otherwise, we will stay in the cognitive dissonance cycle which if you have been there, know how uncomfortable that can be. The trip from assimilation to accommodation can be described as going from conservation of our current belief system to active learning! Where that tipping point is between the two is what you can work to make life less stressful. Ultimately we all want to stay in the active learning cycle.
- We are conditioned by tribal psychology. Being part of a group or a tribe is part of our evolution. We survive and thrive in groups! We associate with certain political or religious groups, and we value being “good members” of those groups more than being right! Most humans feel that social death is more frightening than physical death. (That is until they are faced with physical death, which thankfully is not the case for most.) You can see the issue in this, with political arguments. You might be a Democrat who is for border security or a Republican who is pro-abortion, and we often deny our own personal feelings on any one issue in favor of the group or tribe that we relate to. Most people will never be in a position where their thoughts on gun control, the death penalty, climate change, or the war in Ukraine will affect their day-to-day lives. The only reason to have any opinion on them or to share or argue them is to convey an allegiance to your tribe. This is why I try to foster a different kind of tribe that is in search of the truth above all else while staying flexible in my thinking. I am not looking for like-minded people, so much as I am looking for growth-minded people.
- Confirmation Bias: This goes back to us trying to fit new information into our existing narrative. There is a basic need for us to preserve ourselves, and when we identify with our beliefs, we will be prone to logical errors in an effort to save our ego. We want to see what we want to see. For, example, when you hop on a scale and see a weight that you are happy with, you take that number and go about your day without a second thought. However, when the weight is not what you were hoping for, you take the measurement over and over again 🙂 Seems so silly, but we can see this in many things in our day. We look for what we want to look for and never question when it fits our narrative. It is only when it doesn’t fit that we challenge it. The truth is, we should challenge our thoughts and beliefs all the time. Not just when it suits us!
We are creatures of evolution and naive realism. Subjectivity feels like objectivity, and it is not entirely our fault. We can, however, be aware of how we come to our beliefs and feelings and work to be more open-minded on all fronts.
If you take nothing else from this, please take this…
- You are so much more than your thoughts or beliefs…even ones that you may hold sacred or have held on to for decades. You have the freedom to change at any moment, and you do not have to apologize for it. The goal is growth.
- People aren’t defending their arguments they are defending their identity. Understanding this can increase your influence 100-fold.
- Be careful with who and what you argue about. Every argument changes your mind. Sometimes about the information in the argument, and sometimes about the person you are arguing with. You will never come out unchanged.
- You can choose a different tribe.
