There are times when, in the middle of a conversation, we begin to realise that the other person may have a point.
Their argument makes sense. Something we had taken for granted begins to feel less certain, and for a moment we wonder whether we need to look at things again. Yet instead of saying, “You know what? I might have been wrong,” we keep defending our position.
We find another argument, remember an exception or shift the conversation slightly. Suddenly, holding our ground seems more important than understanding what we really believe.
Why can changing our minds be so difficult?
It would be easy to say that pride is to blame. It certainly plays a part. But the picture is more complicated than that. Our opinions are not simply thoughts that pass through our minds. Over time, some become connected to our history, the choices we have made, the people we identify with and, ultimately, the way we see ourselves.
Changing my mind about a restaurant is one thing. Changing my mind about a way of life I have defended for twenty years is quite another.
In the second case, reconsidering my position may raise many more questions. If I see things differently now, what does that mean for everything I have said over the years? What about the decisions I made because of that belief? What will the people I defended it to so confidently think?
Sometimes changing our minds feels like a small admission of defeat.
That is especially true when a conversation has turned into a confrontation. Once two people are on opposing sides, each trying to prove they are right, it becomes increasingly difficult for either of them to move without feeling that they have “lost”.
We can see this clearly in arguments between partners. At some point, we may realise that we exaggerated or misunderstood what the other person meant. But we are already angry. We have spoken sharply and defended our position for some time. In that moment, the simple words “Yes, now that you put it that way, I see it differently” require more inner security than we might imagine.
There is another reason we find it hard to reconsider: we tend to pay more attention to information that agrees with what we already believe.
If I am convinced that someone does not care about me, I will notice the times they did not call more readily than the moments when they tried to be there for me. If I believe I am not good at something, every failure will seem to confirm it, while I may put my successes down to luck. In this way, without realising it, we build an entire body of evidence around certain beliefs that helps keep them in place.
This is one reason why two people can look at the same reality and feel absolutely certain they are seeing different things.
Certainty, after all, is comforting.
It gives us a sense of knowing where we stand. “I know” offers a stability that “I’m not so sure anymore” cannot. Doubt opens up space, and open space is not always comfortable. We have to spend a little time without a clear answer and allow something new to take shape.
Perhaps that is why psychological flexibility is reflected less in how many opinions we hold than in how free we feel to examine them again.
That does not mean we must constantly question everything. Some values, beliefs and choices have stood the test of time and give our lives stability. Nor is every disagreement a reason to abandon what we believe.
But there is value in being able to listen without preparing our reply at the same time.
In asking ourselves now and then, “What if there is something here I haven’t seen?” In letting a different view sit alongside our own for a while before deciding to reject it. And when something does persuade us, in being able to shift our position without feeling that the change diminishes our worth.
Because saying “I was wrong” does not erase what we know.
It shows that we can learn something we did not know yesterday.
Perhaps, as we grow older, it becomes even more important to hold on to that ability. Our experiences change, the people around us change, and we ourselves are not exactly who we were ten or twenty years ago. It would be strange to expect every opinion we formed in the past to remain unchanged.
There is a particular kind of freedom in being able to say, “That was how I saw it then. I see it differently today.”
We do not need to apologise for every earlier version of ourselves. That person was thinking with the knowledge they had, shaped by what they had lived through, and trying to understand the world from where they stood.
Today, we may be a little further along.
And perhaps changing our minds sometimes is not a sign that we do not know who we are. Perhaps it is one of the ways we continue to discover who we are becoming.
By psychologist and psychotherapist Giannis Xintaras
