“Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing
world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink
and unlearn.
In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of
doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think
hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn.
We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should
be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process.
The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We spend too much time
defending our sacred beliefs, proving the other side wrong, and campaigning for our
worldview, and too little like time doubting ourselves and searching for truth.
And intelligence is not a cure for this ailment. It can even be a curse. Being good at
thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own
limitations we can become.”
These are not my words, but I’m owning them for myself. They’re the words of Wharton
Professor Adam Grant, an expert at helping students embrace a guiding principle to
argue like you’re right but listen like you’re wrong. He is, in essence, an expert on the
intellectual merits of doubt, rethinking, and change. I don’t claim to be an expert of
much of nothing really, but I do make a living by helping folks rethink the way they see
their homes in order to change their lives for the better. So I can tell you, yes, we are in
an age of change … of rapid change … of paradigm shifting change. No, not all
change is good, but many … many changes are long overdue.
So all I want to do today is encourage you to not fear change, to reopen yourself to
change, to be willing to be wrong (you know, like how we’ve all done our lawns for 120
years). Let’s apply our intelligence—instead of just defending where we’ve been—to
being open to changing where we go next. We might just discover—even in the midst
of our doubts—that in embracing change we’re also well on our way to building
ourselves a beautiful life.