What if we are wrong?

There have been several times in my life when I realized that a core belief that I had was wrong. I found something that suddenly changed what I thought was an absolute truth.

Each time this happened it drastically changed my life. It forced me to adjust how I live my life and how I view the world.

Finding out some core belief is wrong is humbling. It forces us to get past our own ego and to see things from a higher level.

It can also scare us. We suddenly realize that there are things that we assume are completely true but they are not.

Many people don’t experience this because their ego will fight against any outside point of view that challenges their closely held beliefs. They are never proved wrong because they don’t let it happen.

This might sound like the better option but it isn’t. They become locked into falsehoods. They go through life believing something that isn’t true. They become rigid and fragile in their self-confidence because their ego is always on the lookout for the next challenging thought or viewpoint.

But each time I realized I was wrong about something, I had to let the new reality settle in my mind. I had to think about it from multiple angles. I had to come to grips with this new information. I had to bruise my ego a bit.

But after a while I started to accept this new reality. This allowed me to take advantage of this information and make changes in my life. The changes came because inevitably there were areas of my life that aligned with the falsehoods and now didn’t make sense to keep doing.

After a few major ones, and many small ones, I started to take a completely different look at life. Instead of feeling as though I know what life is about I realize that I will always be learning.

Watching my daughters grow up I get to witness this from an outside perspective. Children naturally go through life with these major shifts in their ideas about life. They remain flexible and crave information so they can continue to learn.

But once we reach adulthood, most people shut off their desire to learn and acquire new information.

If you can learn to constantly crave new information and always strive to learn more, you will come to these points in life when you realize a belief was not exactly right.

Take this as part of life and learn to improve from it. In order to improve you have to be able to cross these bridges over and over. You have to realize that what you know now is just a temporary understanding and that the more you look to grow the more you will be presented with new information that challenges your beliefs.

Remain flexible during these times and you are sure to transform yourself throughout life to constantly become a better version of yourself.