What Would Make You Change Your Mind?

Before you look for another reason to believe you are right, try a more uncomfortable question.

What would make you change your mind?

A specific observation. A result. Something you could actually recognise if it happened.

If the answer is “nothing,” the investigation is already over. You may still be collecting information, but it no longer has much chance of influencing you.

I think this deserves attention, especially when we care deeply about doing something well.

Experience gives us useful expectations. We recognise situations, anticipate difficulties and develop explanations for what we see. That helps us act.

But an explanation can become so familiar that we stop examining it.

Imagine a rider who believes a difficult movement is going wrong because the horse is distracted.

The horse looks outside the arena: distraction.

The horse anticipates: distraction.

The horse responds differently after the rider changes the preparation: perhaps the horse has finally decided to concentrate.

The explanation survives every possible result.

At that point, it is worth asking whether we have given ourselves a fair opportunity to discover something else.

What would we expect to see if the preparation were the problem? What could we observe without immediately deciding what it means?

The same question belongs in our professional lives.

Perhaps we believe a project needs more visibility. Before investing further in promotion, what would suggest that the offer itself needs work? Are people failing to discover it, or discovering it and choosing something else?

Those are different problems. Our preferred explanation should not prevent us from distinguishing them.

I like making a belief specific enough to examine:

“This is what I currently think. This is why. And this is what would make me reconsider.”

That last sentence matters.

It gives new information somewhere to go.

Changing your mind may mean adjusting one detail rather than abandoning the whole approach. You can keep the goal, preserve what works and revise the part the evidence no longer supports.

There is confidence in being able to do that.

We cannot choose which facts reality will present. We can choose whether our thinking remains available to them.

Before your next important decision, write down one thing that would make you reconsider your preferred option.

Then make sure you would notice it.

Making improvement specific begins with being precise about what you have observed.

Silvia