Something I’ve worked hard at over the last few years is reducing attachment to my opinions. As Daniel Kahneman famously said, “I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.“
The easy example is with mobile phones. I’m an Android guy, but I’d happily switch to iPhone next time if it made more sense to me. I think Android is fantastic, but I avoid being too attached to it.
A bigger concern is with politics; people get too attached to a particular person rather than being willing to vote where it makes the most sense. The most attached I’ve ever been to a politician was a local man named Mike Boyce, and he lived up to it, but I would have quickly turned away if he failed to live up to my expectations for him (which were essentially to be a good and honest man, which he was).
In his book “Think Again“, author Adam Grant explains it like this:
“Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.”
Attachment can leave us tied to bad opinions and bad people. Fight for what you believe, but never get in too deep to be afraid to go the other way.
