In order to grow we need to entertain doubt about our beliefs, feelings, and rightness. Instead of trying to prove we’re right, we should look for ways we’re wrong so we see where we can grow.
In fact, much of what we believe or think we know is wrong. That’s been the case throughout human history. Astronomers once believed the sun revolved around the earth. People also once believed in useless and dangerous health remedies, like leeches and lobotomies.
As children, we believe crazy things that seem logical to us but turn out to be wrong. As adults we believe wrong things about ourselves, other people, and society. Years from now people will shake their heads at what we thought were certainties, like we do over discredited beliefs from years ago.
Willingness to learn and change our beliefs is a lifelong growth process. For example, Michael Jordan noted that he failed over and over and over — and that’s why he succeeded.
We never reach perfection in terms of knowledge or certainty. Learning is a gradual process, where we build on what we learned before. When we learn, we go from being wrong to being less wrong (rather than jumping from wrong to right), and then less wrong again.
Rather than striving for the “right” answer, we should improve what we know little by little, so that tomorrow we’re less wrong than we are today.
You can think of personal growth as a trial-and-error process similar to the scientific method. Values = our hypotheses; actions = the experiment; the resulting feelings and thoughts = data. But no one’s experiment is replicable. We all arrive at unique answers for ourselves. What we determine to be right for us should change with growth.
Don’t get fixated on being right — if you’re afraid to discard certainties and values that aren’t serving you, you’ll stay stuck and won’t improve your life.
For example, suppose a woman is lonely and wants a partner, but doesn’t do anything to make that happen because she’d have to face her beliefs about her attractiveness. So she avoids that discomfort in the short term but at the expense of future happiness. If she instead faced and reframed her beliefs about herself, she could grow and improve her life.
When we stick with erroneous beliefs because we assume we’re right, our certainty stands in the way of growth and happiness.
This applies not just to our fundamental beliefs or values, but also to our temporary impressions. When we define an experience as positive or negative, we can be wrong about it. Sometimes a distressing experience ends up changing our lives for the better, or a seemingly positive experience derails us. The only thing we know is how something feels in the moment.
Our brain is always working to make connections and associations between different experiences in order to create meaning.
Here’s an extreme example of how this occurs. Volunteers in an experiment were told to push buttons to make a light turn on. They didn’t realize that nothing they did would actually have an impact, because the light came on at random. Nonetheless, they came up with elaborate strategies based on what they were doing when the light turned on; they were convinced they had cracked the code. The experiment showed how readily people can come up with bogus processes and explanations.
Our minds generate meaning from our experiences, but there are problems with how we create that meaning:
Be aware of these weaknesses, and you’ll be more aware of when you’re leaping to conclusions and when you could be wrong.
Before you can change your values to better ones, you have to doubt the rightness of your current ones and be open to their flaws.
Your values are works in progress and never complete. If you believe your values and priorities are perfect you risk becoming dogmatic and entitled. You need to concede your ignorance.
If you accept uncertainty, you’re less prone to judge others or yourself, or to harbor biases. You’re open to learning what you don’t know through experience. The more you acknowledge not knowing, the more you can learn.
Pursuing something with certainty actually generates insecurity when they get information that contradicts their certainty. For example, people often are confident about how well they do their job and about the salary they deserve. But if they’re passed over for a promotion their certainty that they deserved it makes them feel worse.
Certainty can also be used for harmful purposes. Researchers used to believe people did wrong things because they felt bad about themselves. But studies in the mid-1990s found the opposite. People who do bad things may actually feel good about themselves — they have unwavering certainty of their rightness — despite being failures. This makes them feel justified in harming others.
Sometimes people have a fear-based certainty that bad things will happen to them. For example, they assume their idea is the one everyone will laugh at. This is a form of entitlement, based on the belief that you’re different and your problems are different.
When you feel insecure, you begin feeling entitled and deserving — for instance, you may feel you have the right to cheat or take what you want. But the harder you try to shore up your certainty the less secure you feel (another example of the backwards law). On the other hand, if you learn to welcome uncertainty you become more comfortable it.
You can’t change or improve your life until you’re able to change how you think of or view yourself.
But people typically avoid changes that challenge their identity. They fear even changes that could improve their lives, because change pushes them out of their comfort zone. It doesn’t matter whether the change is good or bad.
Success and failure both challenge your identity, which is why people fear them both. We may reject beneficial opportunities if they require us to change the values by which we define ourselves. For example, maybe you can’t bring yourself to tell someone you don’t want to see them anymore, because that contradicts your belief in patience and forgiveness.
We put a lot of effort into “finding” or “knowing” ourselves. But this can be limiting if the identity you choose is a narrow one. It can restrict your emotional development and opportunities.
Buddhism teaches that you should give up your idea of who you are because your image of yourself is an artificial creation. The way you think about yourself constrains you, and you should give up these limits.
Giving up your concept of who you are frees you to try things, fail, and grow. For example, when a woman gives up her image of being a perfect spouse and admits she’s not good at relationships, she’s free to end or improve her bad marriage.
The solution:
Questioning and doubting yourself is a difficult skill to learn, but healthy doubt can be developed by asking yourself three questions that encourage humility as opposed to certainty:
Acknowledging you’re wrong or that you don’t know everything allows you to change. Put another way, in order to grow you have to be wrong sometimes.
Because we’re usually not very aware of how we’re feeling and behaving, we need to regularly ask ourselves whether we could be wrong. For example, in an argument with a partner, you might ask, “Is she right? Am I jealous?”
Questioning whether you’re wrong about something doesn’t mean you actually are wrong — sometimes you’re right, or you have an accurate view of your situation.
However, unhappiness is a sign that you’re wrong about something — but you won’t learn what it is and change it until you ask questions.
This is a more difficult question, because it goes one layer deeper. Determining what being wrong would mean requires examining our values and considering potentially contradictory values.
For example, if you’re arguing with your partner, and you realize she’s actually right and you’re wrong, then that could mean “I do get unnecessarily jealous” or “I tend to jump to conclusions way too easily.”
Usually this thinking leads you to discover a weakness, which can be painful to hear. It might require you to adopt better values, such as open-mindedness or tolerance.
This question requires comparing alternatives, including the impact on others. It reveals whether the values underlying your problem are valid or poor ones.
A brother opposes his sister’s decision to marry, because he has a vague hunch that the guy will be bad for her. In questioning whether being wrong creates a better or worse problem, his options might be: A) speak up, and complicate a happy occasion by insisting on a vague hunch; B) question his ability to decide what’s best for his sister, and trust her to make her own decisions.
Option A is simpler and requires little thought, but it also makes everyone miserable.
Option B requires the brother to question whether he’s wrong about the person. And if he is wrong, that would mean he’s not as great an evaluator of people as he thought, and he might just be acting selfishly. Further, if he were wrong, then speaking up would certainly worsen the situation.
He realizes his values are screwed up if being right and imposing his decision on someone else is more important than that person’s happiness and autonomy.
Key points: