psa: you're allowed to change your mind
I used to stubborn AF (my Mum will attest to this). And even though I still love a good, healthy debate, I no longer need to prove myself to be right. I love having my beliefs challenged, whether directly or indirectly. Some times I will end up more certain within myself that I stand by my beliefs, some times I will take time to reflect on the other persons opinion and ask further questions so I can understand better, and other times I will have my perspective and opinion do a complete 180 degrees.
A while back I made the decision that being right was not important to me and that I didn't need to prove my point to anyone. And further still, I was going to embrace opportunities for me to have my mind changed about things.
Because PSA : we are allowed to change our mind and our opinions on things.
Do I still experience situations where I'll feel triggered, be adamant I'm correct and want to argue my point? Abso-f*cking-lutely. But thankfully I'm getting much better at not reacting (it does still happen from time to time) and taking a step back to view a conversation much more objectively.
Towards the end of 2019 I matched with a guy on Tinder. We went on a few dates and it became apparent pretty quickly that we weren't a good match. He had some stuff he needed to work on, and I had yet to move through my "will only date people who have all their inner shit sorted" stage.
In reflection, the guys I was meeting at that point really didn't stand a chance. I'd come out of a 4 year relationship 6 months earlier, and whilst I was over my ex and was completely happy in myself and with my life, I had swung to the extreme in terms of my dating expectations. I was rejecting anyone who demonstrated that they hadn't worked through their own shit and weren't able to take ownership of their past. Any time any of the guys would project their past baggage onto me, say anything that had them blaming an external circumstance or person for why they said/did something, or if I could see that they were still taking on a victim role in the story, it was a hard "no" from me.
I only wanted to be with someone who was doing the work, and more importantly had already done a lot of it. I wasn't looking for a perfect human, but I had zero tolerance for people projecting their shit on me. I was adamant I didn't want what I deemed a "project" partner, and I knew that dating from a place where I felt the want to "fix" or "change" someone was not a healthy place to start a relationship.
I desired a relationship with someone super wise and mature, and who was deep in the personal development space - a man who understood all of my coachy jargon, and enjoyed the self reflective and deep philosophical chats I love to have. Whilst those things are still important to me to a certain extent, one of my main values in life is fun. Sometimes the deep chats exhaust me and I just want to be silly, get excited by the colours in the sky, talk about all the possibly ways we could live our life, dance around the house to rad music, look up the origins of sayings on the internet, and have innuendo filled conversations with someone who can out "that's what she said" me (I'm still yet to meet my match there :P).
Recently I reconnected with that guy I met on Tinder over a year ago. Despite us being a mis-match when it came to dating when we'd initially met, he was a cool guy who I had enjoyed spending time with and I think I knew deep down that we'd hang out again in the future under less triggering circumstances.
In the few conversations we've had when we've caught up over the last couple of months he has caused me to reflect on some things, helped me release some beliefs that I didn't realise I was holding on to, and challenged me to question things that I hadn't even given much thought to.
All without him even knowing it.
The biggest lesson I've learned is just how much people can change. I've always believed this to be true to an extent, but I also realised that whenever I've bumped into or reconnected with someone from my past, I automatically defaulted to assuming that they are more or less the same person that I knew previously. I would still be holding "judgments" about them and subconsciously making assessments based on the person I used to know. In some cases the people were the same but it is unfair of me to assume that, particularly towards people that I may have had some negative biased towards.
On the back of that, I realised how much I have grown and changed in the last 12 or so months. There are some things that he and I haven't agreed on, but where I'd previously have wanted to maintain my stance on my opinion, I've allowed myself to ponder things in more depth and debate with a lot more of an open mind. He's also asked me questions that I'd never even contemplated before and I've spent days reflecting on them, researching and wanting to better understand all angles and perspectives.
Some things I've formed an opinion or somewhat of a conclusion on, and there are others that I think will take some more self reflection.
He also doesn't know it yet but he has played a part in me starting an exciting secret project I'm going to launch at some point this year and I'm so incredibly grateful that the conversations we've had have contributed to sparking this creative fire within me.
Ultimately I acknowledged that I'd been holding myself back from a lot of the things I wanted to say in fear of being wrong.
What if someone doesn't agree with me?
What if someone challenges something I said and I am in fact wrong?
What if I said something and then later decided that it's not actually what I believed anymore?
What would people think if I changed my opinion?
Would I be viewed as a hypocrite?
Would I lose credibility?
The conclusion I came to is exactly the advice I would give a friend, client or anyone who was feeling the same way I'd been feeling…
You are allowed to change your mind.
Whenever you like, for whatever reason, and you don't need to justify yourself to anyone.
SO this is me declaring I'm going to tell it like it is. And maybe one day I'll want to tell you something different.
But this is my journey.
I'm constantly learning, growing and evolving and I just happen to be choosing to do it in a semi-public capacity.
I'm doing this for both me, and for anyone who wants to follow along.
Because I want to everyone to have the permission to show up as their most authentic selves and not worry about making a mistake or saying something wrong.
Life isn't perfect, the journey isn't straight forward and not everyone is going to like you.
And that's all totally okay.