I am wrong. All the time.

I read this article a few weeks ago by Mark Manson. If you haven't read his stuff yet, I recommend it. His writing style/tone is not really my taste but I like his content.

A couple years ago, something about myself or my behavior was bothersome and this little voice inside my head kept trying to tell me, but I ignored it until I read this article (that little voice came back and said, "I told you so"). The article revealed to me how intensely biased I was to my own thinking. It gave me an overconfidence problem. To the point where I stopped questioning/doubting/critiquing myself. It made me think that I knew more than I did, and it made me oblivious to the things that were false and flawed in my thinking. You see, there was a phase in my life where I was hungry/starving to understand certain truths in this world. What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of suffering? What is love? I was so impatient about establishing these truths that I landed on firm conclusions without acknowledging the complexities of these questions. That was a very dangerous place to be, and I was very lucky to even sense it was happening.

So, I'm not suggesting that I needed to doubt every thought that came to mind. What I needed to do was remain open to the fact that I could be wrong. When I put myself in that mindset, I saw that I was wrong about A LOT of things. I was wrong about who I thought I was versus who I actually was. I was wrong about my assumptions about people. I was wrong about things that I use to consider as universal truths. For instance, I always thought that, if the opportunity presented itself, I should help people make their lives better, when in fact, some interventions can have negative repercussions. This line of thinking just put this world on a new level for me.

My mind was unable to adapt dynamically to social and environmental parameters. I needed things to make sense in a certain way, otherwise I would just ignore it or discount it. I became so dependent on my intuition created from past experiences that I turned off my ability to just see the situation as it was and learn to adapt. My confirmation bias was even worse. I would praise myself when I was right about something and ignore it when I was wrong. Blinded by my own bias.

So now, I try to prove myself wrong all the time even when I don't actually think I'm wrong. I just like to play around with the idea that I am wrong. It has led me to a wider range of thought that I never would've imagined. But, it's good to be wrong. It hurts your ego but only temporarily. It means you're learning and walking closer to the truth. How do you know if you've reached the truth? Well, life wouldn't be fun if we were to know.