Changing Your Mind Isn't Failing | 120 Seconds to Better Leadership

*Video Transcription*

I want to talk today about a collapsed distinction that I think many Type A people have, and it’s the collapsed distinction between failure and changing your mind. And here’s how I think that this works.

Most Type A people get really focused on goals.

They’re very goal-oriented, they’re good at taking the steps that achieve that goal, and all of that’s great – except when the goal stops being appropriate for the person, and here’s how that happens.

So, imagine someone that is thinking about starting a business, or making a job change, or going back to school – and of those things. That might be a great, appropriate goal, but it’s possible that something more urgent or important comes up that may not make that the best goal.

Let’s say you’re going to start a business, but then three steps in, your spouse loses their job. Might not be the right time for you to pursue starting a business, as we know it takes quite some time to be financially profitable from that, so maybe the goals aren’t right for the family. Maybe you want to go back to school, and it makes a lot of sense, but you realize that you have a child coming and that maybe that isn’t the best time to go back to school and stop working.

There are always circumstances that can come up and “get in the way,” but those things aren’t really “getting in the way.” That’s just life happening.

And if you get so attached to the outcome of the goal that you’re pursuing that you ignore all the stuff in the middle that might actually be more important, then you may get to that goal, but ultimately what I’ve found is people feel pretty hollow about it.

The hard part for Type A people is learning that when circumstances change or when they get closer to the goal itself, the goal can change.

Say you really want that SVP role, but now you’ve been working for an SVP for two years, and what you can see is their stress level’s so high you think you’d probably be miserable in that role. Well, with more information – and the information is, “It doesn’t look like I want my life to look like that,” – you actually just get to change your mind. You can say, “You know what? It was a goal, but now that I’m this close, I’m going to go ahead and change my goal. Because it doesn’t feel appropriate. So, maybe I’m actually happier, my overall life balance is better if I just stay a VP.”

Changing a goal is not the same as failing.

It’s just, you get more information, and you change your mind, or you get closer to the goal and you decide you don’t like the goal. And it’s okay to course-correct and do something different.

But if we let our egos, especially as Type A people, get so attached to the outcome that we can’t be wise to the signs and circumstances in our life that are saying maybe this is the right thing but maybe it’s not the right thing, we fail to be as adaptable as we need to be, primarily because in our minds we take failure and changing our mind and we put it in the same bucket.

Is sometimes changing your mind flaky and failure? Yeah, it is. But most of the time, for most people, particularly if you know you tend to be accountable, it’s just that collapsed distinction that’s becoming the same thing in your head.

And if you just separate them and go, “Okay, what would failure really look like? Well, what am I really doing here? I’m really changing my mind.” Then all of a sudden all of these options in our life and our careers open up, because we’re not so committed to the goal because our egos tell us we have to or we’re bad, and it opens us up to possibilities that perhaps we had not even considered.

In my experience, at least, those things are actually usually better. But you’ve got to stay open and flexible to see them.

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