The Smartest People I Know Change Their Minds

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7/6/20263 min read

One of the qualities I admire most has very little to do with intelligence. It is the willingness to change your mind.

Not impulsively. Not because someone speaks louder or holds more authority. But because new evidence appears, a different perspective makes sense, or life quietly reveals that your understanding was incomplete.

The older I get, the more I realise how rare this is.

From a young age, many of us are rewarded for having the right answer. At school, we raise our hand when we know it. At university, we are examined on it. At work, we are often promoted because of it. Somewhere along the way, being right can become part of who we are.

The problem is that reality has very little interest in protecting our identity. It keeps changing. Science changes. Relationships change. Organisations change. People change. Sometimes we do too.

The question is whether we allow our understanding to change with them.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the brain is that it is constantly trying to build a coherent model of the world. It has to. Every second, it filters an extraordinary amount of information, deciding what deserves our attention and what can safely be ignored.

This is incredibly efficient.

It is also why we all carry biases.

Once the brain has built a model, it naturally starts looking for evidence that confirms it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. It isn't a sign of poor character or low intelligence. It is simply how an efficient brain works.

The difficulty begins when we stop testing our map against the landscape.

Imagine setting off on a long hike with a map that was printed twenty years ago. At first, everything seems to match. The rivers are where they should be. The mountain peaks are familiar.

Then you reach a bridge that no longer exists. A new road cuts through the valley. The forest has changed.

You have two choices. You can insist the landscape is wrong. Or you can redraw your map.

One of those options gets you home. The other leaves you lost while feeling certain.

I have noticed the same thing in organisations. The leaders who have impressed me most are rarely the quickest to answer. They ask thoughtful questions. They become curious when someone disagrees. They are comfortable saying, "I hadn't considered that." Or even, "I was wrong."

Far from weakening their leadership, those moments strengthen it.

When a leader can change their mind, they give everyone else permission to think rather than defend. Meetings become places where ideas can evolve instead of arenas where opinions compete.

The same is true in our personal lives. Think about the last disagreement you had with someone you care about. How much of the conversation was spent trying to understand? How much was spent trying to be understood?

There is an important difference. One leaves space for discovery. The other quietly protects certainty.

The Stoics understood this well. Socrates is often credited with saying, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." Whether or not those were his exact words, the idea has endured for thousands of years because it speaks to something deeply human.

Wisdom is not the absence of knowledge. It is the recognition that our knowledge will always be incomplete.

I find a similar thread running through Daoism. Water does not argue with the shape of the riverbank. It responds to it. It adapts without losing its nature. There is a quiet strength in that.

Perhaps changing our minds is not about abandoning our principles. Perhaps it is about remaining responsive to reality.

In a world that rewards certainty, that can feel uncomfortable. We admire confidence. We celebrate conviction. Social media rewards decisive opinions far more than thoughtful questions.

Yet certainty and accuracy are not the same thing.

Some of the wisest people I know speak with remarkable humility. While there is no lack in expertise, they understand how much there is left to learn.

That humility creates something precious. Curiosity.

And curiosity is difficult to maintain when we are busy defending what we already believe.

This week, try a small experiment.

The next time you catch yourself saying, "I'm sure...", pause for a moment.

Ask yourself:

What evidence would genuinely change my mind?

If you can answer that question, your mind is still open.

If you cannot, it might be worth asking whether you are searching for the truth or protecting a conclusion.

There is nothing wrong with having strong opinions. Hold them. Test them. Refine them. Just don't hold them so tightly that reality can no longer reach you.

Because intelligence helps us build maps.

Wisdom is remembering that the map was never the territory. And every now and then, having the courage to redraw it.

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maaike@aspasiana.com