About Rethinking

Two months ago, a friend of mine was offered a new job at a new company quite far from home. It was quite a life-changing kind of offer. However, after days of deliberation, he decided not to go.

Today, he shared his resignation letter in our WhatsApp group. When asked why, he said, the company requested a reconsideration. That’s why he decided to rethink and finally changed his mind.

Doesn’t that seem like he’s a guy who’s fickle and easily influenced?

At first thought, I might agree. Yet almost all of us faced this scenario, we are often anchored to the first bit of information that we learned, the first opinion we uttered, an initial decision that we made, it’s easy to settle with it and choose not to invest any extra effort to rethink especially when the first one already makes sense… until we are nudged to do so.

Even worse, some people are reluctant to change any of their opinions, as if it defines their identity, and if they don’t stick to their words, it will affect their reputation. They are driven by either ego or fear. Fear that they will be labeled as someone who doesn’t know what they want if they change their mind.

The intention of writing this post is to remind myself and others that it’s okay to always welcome new information and reassess our beliefs/opinions/decisions. Whenever possible, avoid looking at problems as two sides of a coin. “If this is true, that must be wrong”, “If this is good, that must be bad“. Because this is when we tend to choose sides. When we choose sides, we tend to get attached to them. When we get too attached to anything, we tend to lose our perspective, we shut down rather than open up when a core belief is questioned.

Let’s avoid living like a typical preacher, prosecutor, or politician who is trying to advance an agenda. Instead, let’s live like a scientist, who sees things from many lenses, continuously trying to get to the truth.