To change our minds at some point is not to give up who we are, it is to realize that the people we trust are not complete, it is to assume that a path that we have deemed right is not and, above all, to know how to follow. with maturity and wisdom, so let’s not forget that we all have this precious right to change and grow.
Strange as it may seem, in our daily lives it is common for us to see with skepticism our different actions and thoughts. This reaction can occur to family, couples, or friends. “But how did you start to like green if you always liked it, blue?
“Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks about changing. -Aleksei Tolstoy-
And so it is. Now we like green, red or blue better, simply because we understand that there are more colors in life than we thought, we have also discovered that there are nuances that favor us much more, that there are flavors that awaken our senses and that there are smells, places and environments more motivating and enriching.
Changing your mind is not a sacrilege nor does it make us unstable, on the contrary, people who are capable of opening their minds, of being receptive to other stimuli and who are also open to change when they consider it necessary, are a type of highly competent profile in their own personal growth.
People who change their minds quickly and for no reason create mistrust, this is normal, because it is not easy to live with someone who today tells us one thing and then does another, with whom he vehemently defends a set of values and tomorrow denies. them and choose totally opposite values. That’s not the kind of behavior dynamic we’re talking about here.
We talk specifically about this capacity that we must all practice: the change that aims to facilitate human development, so being able to change your mind about a problem, behavior or conception of a particular person is almost always the starting point to facilitate our progress. our only opportunity to adopt other more useful perspectives and approaches.
In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, social psychologists Ian Handley and Dolores Albar published an interesting study a few years ago about our resistance to changing attitudes According to this work, there is a central and incredibly revealing fact: people with good self-esteem. esteem and who feel good about themselves have a more open mind and are much more receptive to change. Also, they’re not afraid to change their minds at any time and explain why they do it.
This fact is related to what other psychologists, Melissa Finucane and Paul Slovic, have called “emotional heuristics. “That is, these profiles with a vital approach, more flexible and more open to experimentation, which usually make their decisions based on mental shortcuts that feed directly on their emotions or, rather, “their instincts”.
Is your self-known potential so high that you have one?Detector? (an inner voice) able to warn you when something no longer suits you, or when certain ideals, entrepreneurship or concepts should be discarded because they cause dissonance, dissatisfaction or unhappiness.
On the other hand, people who are more reluctant to change their minds or attitudes use more sophisticated but less emotional heuristics, and only then will they be able to build walls to invalidate in thousands of possible ways anything that dares to question their personality. preconceived ideas.
“If I’ve learned something in life, it’s not wasting time trying to change the way other people are. “-Carmen MartÃn Gaite-
You have the right to change your mind, to stop admiring someone without feeling bad, it is your right, you are free to enjoy a discipline, a hobby or an area of knowledge that you previously criticized simply because you had not had the courage to come and discover what it can offer.
Sometimes the change of heart is to develop, allowing us to open new doors by closing others behind us to move forward with more skill and security. And none of this is bad or worse, quite the opposite.
In this sense, in each of these stages, there is a fact that we cannot ignore.
Anyone who changes their minds about someone or something has gone through an intense exercise in self-reflection was allowed to use the emotional heuristics mentioned above to remember where their essences are, the voice of their instinct, as well as their emotional needs.
Therefore, we must not change without thinking or changing our minds for no reason, it is necessary to have security, with the certainty and motivation that there are things that no longer have to be defended because there are more valid and rewarding options.
To think about this is to stop being so afraid of change, big or small.