Today I want to talk about being proven wrong, and why you should welcome it.

To illustrate my point, I’m gonna use an example. Imagine you’re learning a new language, in my case, let’s say german.

You are pretty mediocre at german, you are rather insecure and you make many mistakes. This might lead to you not wanting to talk to germans, because you fear they will laugh about you, and it would make you feel stupid. And from my experience, yes, it will make you feel stupid. But more often than not, you get an explanation WHY you were wrong, and what your mistake was. And this is incredibly valuable information, so please, go out there and go feel stupid, but never forget to ask why you are stupid.

I believe that most people feel obligued to what they said are their believs. Basically never allowing themselves to change because that would embarass them in front of the others. I noticed this myself. Let’s say I had an argument with you, I stated that I believe X and I do so very strongly. Now you start convincing me of Y, you bring up some really convincing arguments and some really good points and I start doubting X, but I won’t admit it. I’ll try to continously defend X. For some people this might be because they started to associate themselves with X and they take it as a personal offense, some others, including me, just like to subconsciously defend the position because it would be embarassing to admit defeat.

This is something I’ve been struggling with since a long time because you only notice that it happened after you did it. The key to getting over it is to become aware of what you are doing when you are doing it.