Some people tend to associate their beliefs with their identities, as if attachment to those beliefs must be concrete for life. If this is you, understand that personal life experience can change your perspective – and that’s okay. This is why it’s okay to change your beliefs:
Stimulates Your Curiosity
As you age, the known part of your reality can take up more importance than the unknown. Seeing life for how it is, whether through your own experience or depicted in the media, can lead to acceptance that what you see is all you need to know.
Not to mention that getting older also entails more responsibility, so it’s easy to get fixated on the day-to-day grind and lose sight of learning new things.
As a kid, this was not the case. You were limited in life experience so your way to make up for that was to explore new ideas, new places, new experiences, and new beliefs.
Exploration is just curiosity, and curiosity makes life more interesting.
This should be considered when fixated on a belief.
Finding that inner-child’s curiosity about a new perspective can open your mind up to a whole range of new thoughts. And you might find those thoughts to be more interesting or meaningful than what you previously thought.
I’ve taken the inner-child idea from The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene, which I highly recommend reading.
To get an idea of what to expect from the book, see here for some of my favourite insights.
Helps Develop Courage
If you’re naturally less of an open-minded person, the thought of trying to change your beliefs might seem laughable to you.
See here for a story I have from an article on personality’s influence on thoughts and behaviour as it relates to this topic.
Even if you’re more open-minded, it will still take some convincing through logical reasoning to get you to change your beliefs. But it’s more likely to happen.
That’s not to say that close-minded people can’t and don’t – it still happens.
In any case, once you’ve made sense of why you should do it, you’re then left with finding the courage to admit to yourself that you may have previously been wrong.
Wrong, naive, or biased.
Even further is admitting to others that you’ve changed your mind (if they know you had a different view beforehand). That risks being labeled as less intelligent or indecisive, as mentioned above.
So taking that step in spite of the potential reputation harm is bold and commendable.
Courage is a trait that many desire but few embody because it’s difficult to practice by design. Integrating it into your personality will serve you well in life, and this is a small step you can take to that end.
Teaches You Something New
A change in your belief is also a change in perspective.
A different perspective can be introduced through life experience by meeting new people or going through hardships. I believe that the more of an emotional impact an experience has on you, the more likely it is to consider adopting a different perspective.
What’s also worth noting is that you’re learning something new that you otherwise wouldn’t have. No matter how small the detail is.
For example, let’s say you came from a wealthy family who raised you to value money above everything else. This molded your perspective on social status, social treatment and personal value.
Then you come across someone who lives in a dangerous environment and on the poverty line. Their story of trying to persevere through such conditions is so compelling that your stance on the poor is one of empathy now.
But you were brought up believing that poor people are lazy, useless and not worth your time to engage with.