When you begin to question your beliefs, especially in the later stages where it becomes obvious that you are going to have to change your thinking, there is a certain kind of fear that can set in. A fear of the unknown, perhaps, or a fear of being set adrift without direction.
For me, there was the particular challenge that relinquishing one belief often sets off a chain reaction that destroys a whole bunch of dependent beliefs.
That can be scary.
Tossing away old beliefs feels like willfully erasing huge chunks of memory–like you’re going to have to go back to grade school and learn the alphabet all over again.
Lots of people have overcome this fear, of course, but here’s a thought that might make it a little easier. When you give up a mistaken idea, you are not losing knowledge, you are gaining it.
For every incorrect idea that you give up, you gain at least one new idea to replace it–namely, that your old thinking was wrong. Even if you now have no clue what the right idea is, you know you were wrong. That’s new information. That’s new knowledge. That’s pulling from the liabilities column and adding to the assets. It’s a win-win.
It’s even better if you discovered new information that showed why you were wrong. In that case, you’re not just correcting a mistake, which by itself adds new knowledge, but with the new information you get to double up your winnings in the bonus round. A win-win-win?
I’ve decided that finding out I’m wrong is really a great thing. Its still a little scary, because I’m human and I don’t like to think about how much of an idiot I am. Even so, any day I can become a little less of an idiot is a good day.
Discovering you are wrong is not losing knowledge. It’s actually the easiest way of gaining knowledge.