We don’t just hesitate to rethink our answer. We hesitate at the very idea of rethinking. Part of the problem is cognitive laziness. Some psychologists point out that we’re mental misers: we often prefer the ease of hanging on to old views over the difficulty of grappling with new ones. Yet there are also deeper forces behind our resistance to rethinking. Questioning ourselves makes the world more unpredictable. It requires us to admit that the facts may have changed, and that what was once right may now be wrong. Reconsidering something we believe deeply can threaten our identities, making it feel as if we are losing part of ourselves.
-Adam Grant

“Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
-George Bernard Shaw

Rethinking isn’t a struggle in every part of our lives. When it comes to our possessions, we update with fervor. When it comes to our knowledge and opinions, though, we tend to stick to our guns. Psychologists call this seizing and freezing. We favor the comfort of convection over the discomfort of doubt, and we let our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we still cling to opinions that we formed in 1995. We listen to views that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
-Albert Einstein

“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”
-Zig Ziglar

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
-Elon Musk

“Rethinking is a skill set, but it’s also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.”
-Adam Grant

“The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know.”
-Adam Grant

“Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities – to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.”
-Klaus Schwab