Is It Just Me Or... Do We Need to Make it Okay to be Wrong?

And maybe even… Change your mind after learning new information?

A few years back, I was writing a book. I was also having daily panic attacks about the book. The thoughts that would set my panic in motion largely revolved around being wrong – not that I believed I was wrong at the time, but the possibility that I might look back in future years, and realise that I was. New information might come out, new terminology definitely would, and even researching as thoroughly as I did, I might have missed something. And the thought of that fucked. Me. Up.

For as long as I can remember, my brain has told me that the way we stay safe is by trying to know everything and trying to be perfect. Spoiler: these two things are both literally impossible. No human being in this entire solar system knows everything. Not even Lizzo.

These days, there are often thousands of people ready to tell me how wrong I am, and a lot of those people seem to hold the expectation that I really should know everything… And I’m going to be honest with you: that’s a lot.

Being wrong on social media is not taken lightly. Sure, there are a few voices speaking up about the importance of making mistakes and making space for learning, but generally, you better know your shit before you say anything. And if someone else with a platform tells their audience that your shit is wrong? You better brace yourself for the storm.

On social media, we somehow expect people to know everything we know (even if we only learned it last week). If they don’t know what we know, we’re entitled to make sweeping judgements about their entire character and how awful they are for not realising that they’re drinking coffee from a company that once, five years ago, wrote an insensitive tweet.

We pull up each other’s social media past as damning evidence of who someone is now, as if they couldn’t possibly have grown or changed since then. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m definitely not exactly the same person with exactly the same value system and beliefs that I had when I was 18… and thank fuck for that. I was an asshole.

We have created an online environment where the only way to stay safe from backlash is to know everything, and to be perfect. As someone who’s lived in a mental environment like that for her whole life, I know that there is no winning here. If we stay here, what space does that leave for learning? What space does that leave for healthy reflection and evolving our beliefs when we encounter new information? We talk a big game about growth, but are we actually allowing it to happen? Are we allowed to be wrong, and learn from it?

My friend Kenzie recently started doing a type of social media post where she lists five things she was wrong about that week, in an effort to normalise being a fallible human who is always learning (y’know, like we all are). So, following her lead, here’s what I was wrong about this week:

1.      I jokingly said to my sister, Gemma, that if she were Prime Minister, she could put a law in place that would require McFly to get back together. They never broke up. (Apologies, McFly).

2.      I rediscovered some recent tweets I made about cancel culture that I no longer totally agree with (been doing a lot of unlearning about that lately, more posts coming).

3.      I was absolutely wrong to follow the cars in front of me when my normal route home was closed and I didn’t know another way back. That 30 minute journey became 2 hours real quick.

4.      Turns out I can’t get through a whole cheese board by myself before it starts to stink out the fridge.

5.      I’ve noticed since spending more time back out in the world, that I’m almost surprised when people are nice? There is actually more everyday kindness around than I realised, and I think it’s more important than I realised as well.

We need to give ourselves (and others) the grace to be wrong sometimes, without feeling like we need to throw ourselves in the bin when we are. There is no growth if we’re never wrong. And that doesn’t sound so perfect to me.

Over to you. If it’s not just me, tell me something that you were wrong about & learned from in the comments, or if you don’t feel like sharing right now, hit me with a “not just you” so I know we’re on the same wave 💜