The Quiet Courage of Changing Your Mind
Quiet courage rarely looks impressive in the moment. But it’s often what makes growth possible.
We once went searching for a school that could help one of our kids thrive. He was bright, brilliant, actually, but his ADHD meant that traditional classrooms felt like cages. Teachers saw distraction; we saw intensity. Schools saw disruption; we saw curiosity without brakes.
When I first visited this alternative school, I nearly walked out.
Kids were out of their seats. They were talking over each other. A few were pacing. It looked, frankly, out of control. I put on my Critical Parent cap—the one many of us wear when we think we’re being responsible, and thought, There’s no way my kid could survive here. I had spent my life advocating for better education, for structure and accountability, and here it seemed like chaos reigned.
But instead of leaving, I leaned in.
I listened.
What sounded like arguing was a heated debate about physics. A cluster of middle schoolers were passionately discussing the speed of light and whether time dilation would make interstellar travel possible within a human lifetime. Another group was building a model to test a mathematical theory. The energy in the room wasn’t disorder, it was engagement. These kids weren’t being required to sit quietly and raise their hands like in regular schools. They were being required to think.
We enrolled our child.
He thrived.
And I learned something humbling: my first judgment had been wrong. Changing my mind about that school was uncomfortable. It required me to admit that my assumptions—formed by years of cultural conditioning about what “real learning” looks like—had blinded me to a deeper truth.
Changing your mind is one of the hardest things a human being can do.
It isn’t hard because new evidence is rare or because learning is unpleasant: it’s hard because beliefs don’t just live in the intellect. They live in identity, community, memory, and pride.
To change a belief often feels like betraying a former version of yourself, or worse, admitting that you were wrong in front of people whose approval once mattered.
As a result, we learn to defend positions long after they’ve stopped serving us.
Modern culture doesn’t help. Certainty is rewarded and confidence is confused with competence. People who speak without hesitation are treated as leaders, while those who pause, revise, or qualify their thoughts are viewed with suspicion. Changing your mind is framed as weakness, flip-flopping, or even a lack of conviction.
Wisdom traditions take the opposite view.
They treat flexibility as strength. They see rigidity as a sign of fear. And they understand that clinging to an idea after it’s outlived its usefulness isn’t loyalty, it’s stagnation.
The quiet courage of changing your mind lies in its humility. It requires acknowledging that your understanding was partial, that your perspective was limited, and/or that the world is more complex than the story you once told yourself. This isn’t self-rejection: it’s self-respect.
Children do this naturally. They revise their understanding constantly because they aren’t yet invested in being right; they’re instead invested in figuring things out. Somewhere along the way, we replace curiosity with reputation. We start protecting beliefs not because they’re true, but because they’re ours.
Once that happens, evidence becomes a threat rather than a gift.
Changing your mind also carries social risk. Beliefs are often woven into group belonging. Political identities, religious frameworks, professional cultures, even family dynamics can make certain ideas untouchable. Questioning them can feel like questioning the relationship itself.
That’s why so many people change their minds privately but not publicly. They update their internal map, to use the old NLP term, while continuing to speak an older language in order to preserve harmony. This is understandable, but it comes at a cost: living with divided loyalties fractures the self.
Wisdom doesn’t demand reckless honesty or unnecessary confrontation. But it does ask for internal coherence. It asks that your inner life not be organized around fear of disapproval.
There’s also often a deeper fear beneath resistance to change: changing your mind forces you to confront uncertainty. It reminds you that there may be more revisions ahead. It undermines the fantasy of final arrival, the comforting idea that one day you’ll have it all figured out.
Wisdom accepts that this day never comes.
Instead, it treats understanding as provisional. It assumes that learning is ongoing, that perspective evolves, and that growth includes letting go. This doesn’t lead to paralysis; it leads to discernment.
People who are willing to change their minds tend to listen differently. They ask better questions. They notice nuance. They can hold disagreement without turning it into combat. They’re less interested in winning and more interested in seeing clearly.
This doesn’t mean they lack principles. In fact, it often means the opposite. When surface beliefs shift, deeper values can become clearer. Compassion, fairness, dignity, and honesty often survive multiple revisions. The forms change, but the cores remain.
There’s something quietly liberating about this. When you stop needing to be right, you become free to be responsive. You can admit mistakes without collapsing. You can revise without erasing your past. You can say, “I used to think this, now I think that,” and mean it without shame.
In a world addicted to certainty, this kind of openness is rare. It takes patience to sit with unresolved questions, to live without neat answers, and to trust that understanding will deepen in time.
Thus, changing your mind doesn’t mean you failed to think things through: it means you kept thinking.
When I think back to that day in the school, the noise, the motion, the apparent chaos, I remember how close I came to walking away. If I had clung to my first impression, to my need to be the decisive, certain parent, my child might have missed the environment that allowed him to flourish. My pride would have cost him his growth.
Instead, I chose to listen.
And that choice, to soften, to reconsider, to revise, isn’t just about education. It’s about being human. Every time we loosen our grip on certainty, we make room for truth to enter. Every time we admit we might not have seen the whole picture, we create the possibility of something better.
Quiet courage rarely looks impressive in the moment. It can look like hesitation. It can look like doubt. It can even look like weakness.
But sometimes it’s the difference between walking away from a room full of “chaos” and discovering a room full of brilliance.
And over a lifetime, that willingness to change your mind may be the most powerful act of wisdom we ever practice.
That willingness is one of the clearest signs of wisdom we have.
It’s not loud. It doesn’t announce itself. But over a lifetime, it shapes people who are less brittle, more humane, and better able to meet reality as it actually is.
Quiet courage rarely looks impressive in the moment. But it’s often what makes growth possible.
Thank you Thom. Insightful, engaging as always.