Things We Don't Apologize For: Changing Our Minds

Yesterday: Never apologize for your taste in clothes. It's your style.

Today: Never apologize for changing your mind, it is your perogative.

For the last few weeks, I've been struggling to get it together to write these. Not at all because I don't want to do them, but I have a LOT going on in my space. I'm going home this weekend, one of my close friends is moving at the end of the year so this is our last week together, I'm stressed on the job, and as usual my mind is working overtime on issues I can't control/predict. With all that, my ability to sit and write a coherent post has waned. I crank 'em out, but I worry that they're not good enough.

Many of you may have come and read one post only to come back note major changes. For example, on yesterday's post, I published it and later decided I wanted to add a picture of Rihanna. I also intially added a picture of Cassie, but decided that was too much #tomfoolery for this space, so I simply linked it. I've even edited/changed posts weeks and months after their initial posting.

Why? Cause I changed my mind about the phrasing of a sentence, or the point of a paragraph. Or in the case of adding pictures, thought a little visual media might help my otherwise bland posts.

Changing your mind should not be confused with being indecisive (though I joked earlier with a friend that they were one and the same). Indecisive people can't make up their minds to begin with. We change our minds because we gain additional information that changes our opinion.

This got to be a big deal during the 2008 Presidency campaign. When is it ok, as a politician who makes laws, to change your mind? One of the candidates (who, exactly, escapes me now) suggested that as new information comes in, it is appropriate to change your mind if that information casts light on an issue you hadn't been able to previously consider. In other words: sometimes, you have not enough time and not enough information to make a good decision, so you make the best one you can and then you change your mind as more time elapses and more information comes in.

Look at the people that come in and out of our life. We don't often friend people who we hate. We like people we're friends with and then new information comes in: they show their true colors, they make a horrible decision that effects us irreperably, they cease to to be the person we became friends with, so we change our minds.

You shouldn't ever apologize for changing your mind because you got new information. If we didn't allow people to change their minds, we'd never see a change in our government, people wouldn't reduce their carbon footprint, enemies would never become friends, no one would learn. The ability to use new information to change your mind is a good one to have, so don't apologize for it.

3 Days remain in our series

Tomorrow: Never apologize for making a decision from your heart, even if others don't agree. You have to live with the consequences not them.