How to Change Your Own Mind When It’s the Right Thing to Do
By: Mighty Knowledge
Tags: Thinking, Self Improvement, Strategy, Mindset, Books

Changing your mind with wisdom

Understanding the Sunk Cost Fallacy was the first step towards learning how to change your mind. What we want to do now is overcome this fallacy and bring rationality back into our decision making. Doing so will help you to develop your skill in deciding when it’s better to change your mind. There are a few ways to do this.

Drop the plan

Sometimes, having no plan is the best strategy because then you won’t be committed to anything. You can change at any moment without feeling that you need to maintain any consistency. Warren Buffett talks about the advantages of having no concrete plan for his investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway:

“We do have a few advantages, perhaps the greatest being that we don’t have a strategic plan. Thus we feel no need to proceed in an ordained direction but can instead simply decide what makes sense for our owners.”

By dropping the plan, Buffett and his team are able to quickly adapt to changes. They don’t care much if they have to change from their initial direction or think about the market differently. They just care about getting the best possible return. This mindset encourages them to always jump on the best opportunities without being stuck in any rigid plan.

Leave your plans a bit flexible and open. You can have a general goal, just like Buffett does with “get the best returns,” but don’t be tied to any kind of step-by-step restrictions. Do what needs to be done to reach the overall goal, even if that means changing course along the way.

Remove the past

Removing past events and commitments from your decision making will encourage you to adjust course when necessary. The famous Historian Thomas Carlyle once said that:

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. ”

Perhaps the stock you purchased looked great last month, but the latest news shows otherwise. That’s perfectly OK, you can change course and as Carlyle said “do what lies clearly at hand,” make the best decision based on the information that you have right now.

The past is gone and done. One should make their decisions based on the information that is presently available. New information could mean a better option has emerged. Don’t let the past of yesterday influence your decisions of today.

Look at facts only

A great exercise for better decision making is to write down all of the facts only. We define a fact as something that is objectively true and 100% verifiable. For your decision making, you can label the facts as positive or negative to check if the choice will be a good one. This is similar to the pros and cons approach of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin writes:

“My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one Pro and over the other Con…When I have thus got them altogether in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights…. I find where the balance lies; and if after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly.”

The advantage of this method is that it is fully objective. There are no emotions or cognitive biases involved. The decision itself is logical in that the pros and cons are directly weighed and calculated. This decision making technique can be applied at any time, either before you make your initial decision or afterwards to determine if you should change course. Logic and rationality grant you freedom from the influence of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Let other people check you

We certainly won’t be able to know everything all of the time; our own perspective is in itself biased. But what we can do is ask other people to help us out, to double-check our decision making. The Italian artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci says:

“We know well that mistakes are more easily detected in the works of others than in one’s own. When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reserve, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.”

Other people have a different view of your work. They will be able to see your situation more objectively since they are not tied to the emotional self-image that you are. They aren’t restricted by the same Sunk Cost Fallacy since they’re not as invested in your decision.

So when you have the opportunity, ask people to review your decision. Try to give them the rawest, most uncut view of your situation such that they can look at it objectively. With that second opinion, you’ll more easily be able to spot mistakes and pick the best option available.

In Summary

Changing your mind on a previous decision is often a great thing to do. There could be a better option now due to new information. But we often find it hard to change our minds due to the Sunk Cost Fallacy in Psychology. There are a few ways to overcome it: