Postanly Weekly, Issue #546

You Can’t Change Anyone — You Can Only Make Them Think

Photo: The WanderingSoul/Behance

Hello and Happy Wednesday!

Here is your weekly dose of Postanly Weekly— my best essays, insightful posts, tools for productivity and timeless wisdom for life.

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A quote I’m pondering: “One of the simplest ways to win is to always connect the small things you do to the larger thing you hope to accomplish. Five minutes can be spent working on something trivial or working on something life-changing. A brief session of work oriented toward a great cause is always time well spent. Most daily actions evaporate. Some accumulate.” — James Clear

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You Can’t Change Anyone — You Can Only Make Them Think

Every day, we’re faced with people who seem totally different from us.

They act and think differently than we do.

They come from different backgrounds and cultures. Their values, beliefs, and motivations may seem foreign to us.

These differences can make dealing with people so challenging. But different doesn’t have to mean problematic.

Understanding why other people are the way they are can make it easier for us to connect with them and work together.

You can’t transform, upgrade or improve anyone without their permission.

Humans are deeply biased — we look for evidence to support what we already know to be the only truth. That’s why changing anyone’s mind is so hard.

“We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions. The bad news is that they can leave us blind to our blindness, which gives us false confidence in our judgment and prevents us from rethinking,” says Adam M. Grant, in his book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.

Other people are on a different wavelength from you, and they can’t understand why you think the way you do.

It might be frustrating, but it’s something you’ll have to accept.

Change doesn’t come easy, especially if it challenges one’s current beliefs or actions. It can feel intimidating and scary.

Andy Warhol explains it beautifully, “When people are ready to, they change.They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”