Dealing with change and uncertainty requires mental flexibility. Part of that is being able to change your mind as your understanding grows. Adam Grant wrote an excellent book on rethinking, it's an invitation to let go of knowledge and opinions that are no longer serving you well and to anchor your sense of self in flexibility rather than consistency.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
George Bernard Shaw

Adam Grant "examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life"

To cultivate a flexible mind is about taking a scientific approach to thinking. Develop more humility about your knowledge, doubt in your convictions, and curiosity for discovering alternative points of view. His recommendation is that we all think more like a scientist, as opposed to the prosecutor (prove the other person wrong), politician (win over an audience) or preacher (protecting and promoting our beliefs).

Finding the joy in being wrong and keeping an open mind to the pursuit of truth requires a reframe of our identity: identifying ourselves by our values, rather than our beliefs. Loosening our grip on our beliefs and untangling them from our identity allows us to observe them more objectively, challenge them and change them, without feeling like we've fundamentally departed from who we are.

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https://adamgrant.net/podcasts...

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• Acknowledging complexity doesn't make people less convincing; it makes them more credible.
• Resisting the impulse to simplify is a step toward becoming more argument literate.
• A fundamental lesson of desirability bias is that our beliefs are shaped by our motivations. What we believe depends on what we want to believe.
• Hearing an opposing opinion doesn't necessarily motivate you to rethink your own stance; it makes it easier for you to stick to your guns (or your gun bans). Presenting two extremes isn't the solution; it's part of the polarization problem. Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It's a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories. To overcome binary bias, a good starting point is to become aware of the range of perspectives across a given spectrum.
  

• Relationship conflict is generally bad for performance, but some task conflict can be beneficial: it's been linked to higher creativity and smarter choices.
• Motivational Interviewing is one of the best ways to help people rethink and unlearn. The central premise is that we can rarely motivate someone else to change. We're better off helping them find their own motivation to change. In many ways, this approach is similar to coaching.
• Develop a trusted "challenge network." You are unlikely to be able to see all of your own blind spots, no matter how self-aware you become. To ensure you know what you don't know, you need a team of employees willing to challenge you. Grant calls these employees "disagreeable givers." "They dish out the tough love and critique you because they care and want to make your thinking better," he says. Grant's favorite way of identifying these types of people in a job interview is to ask some version of this question at the end of the interview: If you were going to reinvent our hiring process, what would you do differently? Disagreeable people often will give you the most honest feedback without fearing repercussions. That last part is key: For disagreeable givers to be most effective, they must operate in a psychologically safe culture that treats mistakes as learning opportunities.

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Ask better questions

Asking people how, rather than why, is a great way of unlocking limitations of their understanding. When people describe why they believe something (especially when it's on the extreme), they often commit even more to that belief. By asking them how they would operationalise their views, they will likely quickly realise the limitations of the extremes and start to tame their views. Asking how they originally formed an opinion is also a useful tool.Adam talks about the idea of being a 'logic bully', or assaulting people with cold, hard, rational facts. We've likely all had situations where we've tried this and know that it doesn't work to change anyone's mind (usually it makes them resist and hold onto their views even tighter. Before peppering someone with the evidence, ask them the question 'what evidence would change your mind'.

Rethink your life

It's so easy to get sucked into the tunnel vision of life, wrapping our identity in decisions made in a different time and context - especially with our profession. From a young age, we're asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' and our careers turn into something we 'be' rather than something we 'do'.In the book Adam says that 'kids might be better off learning about careers as actions to take rather than as identities to claim.'. He suggests scheduling a twice-yearly life checkup with yourself to assess what you're learning, how you're evolving and whether there's anything that needs a rethink or a course correction. Similarly, setting regular time in your day or week to think, rather than do, and forcing a prompt for constant unlearning and rethinking, rather than getting stuck in the way you always do things and the way you always think of things.

• notice
• reflect
• try
• learn
  
• share
• evolve