PERSONAL SPECIAL...Is it okay to change your mind?

Is it okay to change your mind?  As people evolve and circumstances change, no decision seems too sacrosanct to be questioned again     YOU set off for the ice-cream parlour, determined to have a Lemon Pop, but once there, decide on Chocolate Ripple. A plan to go to the movies changes to relaxing at home. You are engaged to be married but every instinct within you screams against it, and you call off the wedding. All your life you have been a non-vegetarian, but now you decide to go green. Sonia Gandhi was dead set against life in politics, yet look at her today! Salman Khan never attended any award ceremony as a matter of principle; now, he is also all set to host an awards function.     Is it okay to change your mind? How often can one do so without being labelled a weak-minded flip-flopper? Contemporary thinkers and successful people encourage thinking, revisiting issues and questioning decisions we may have once considered closed. Nothing is written in stone. We change our minds about small things almost every day and think nothing of it. But it takes courage to declare a change of mind about larger issues as we are scared of being labelled weak-willed or lacking in confidence. As a result we pressurise ourselves to take ‘firm’ decisions and stick by them. However, decisions are always taken under a certain set of circumstances and the context changes over time — as do people, their attitudes and beliefs. So, how can one not change his/her mind about decisions taken earlier as one learns and evolves?     Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was recently quoted saying that the “people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds”. He declared that having ideas that contradict each other is healthier because smart people keep revising “their understandings of a matter… They reconsider problems they thought they had solved. They are open to new points of view, new information, and challenges to their own ways of thinking.”     So then, ‘consistency of thought’ doesn’t necessarily seem a positive trait. On the other hand, people who are rigid and averse to changing their minds, no matter what, suffer because they fail to introspect and keep open minds in a constantly changing and evolving world. Sometimes, our comfort zones change, shift or get enhanced. What seemed impossible earlier may change over time and we are then within our rights to change our minds about it. Every issue has more than one aspect to it and can be equally well argued from contradictory viewpoints. Then how can there be just one right decision?     The criticality is not in changing your mind, but in the reason you changed it and the effect it has on others. A change of mind should always come from deep conviction and reasoning. Sometimes, reality may not support an idea or a dream you have nourished; once you realise this, sense lies in making a shift in plans. At other times, circumstances may have changed, rendering earlier plans inadequate or impossible. It would be perfectly reasonable to change your mind here again.     Advances in technology and new information/options may cause a churning of thought one may have earlier been ill-equipped for. This may give rise to new ideas and thoughts that can, and should, encourage us to reopen and re-examine old issues, and to come up with different answers. New discovery or realisation may also force one to change one’s mind while one can.     However, what is not acceptable is changing one’s mind merely for one’s own convenience, particularly if you end up discomforting or hurting others. And when a change of mind becomes really difficult is when the result is a change in one’s life, career path or a relationship. However, that doesn’t mean such a change should not be effected; so long as you are convinced it is needed for greater good and happiness, and you are not compromising your principles for the same.     If we wish to be effective and want to come up with the best answers for everything, we must constantly evolve, keep abreast of changing circumstances and new information, and be prepared to reexamine critical decisions. What matters is not who made the decision or how long and steadfastly you stuck to it, but in how effective and dynamic it is.     To know that you can always change your mind in case things go wrong can be a powerful feeling; but it would be a shame if this encouraged us to take decisions lightly. For then you would be a typical flip-flopper! Vinita Dawra Nangia TL130224