Be UNIQUE!!

“If you truly want to change your life, you must first be willing to change your mind. » The phrase is from Don Altman. In other words: anyone who truly wants to transform their existence must first agree to revise their way of thinking. The statement seems obvious. It is actually demanding, because it places effort where no one sees it, well before visible decisions, announcements and results.

Changing your mind is not denying yourself

Many people confuse consistency with rigidity. They maintain a position because they have defended it publicly, because they have devoted time to it, or because a change of mind seems to them an admission of weakness. This reflex is human, and it is expensive. In project management, it has a specific name: escalation of commitment. We add means to an option which has already shown its limits, to avoid admitting that the initial hypothesis was false.

Revising one's judgment, in the sense of this quote, does not consist of giving in to the first contradiction. It means accepting that the conclusion is revisable when the facts have changed. The solidity of a person is not measured by the fixity of his positions, but by the quality of the method which produces them.

Uniqueness is constructed, it cannot be proclaimed

Declaring yourself unique costs nothing. Becoming requires work on three levels: what we can do better than the average, what we refuse to do even under pressure, and what we bring to a collective that no one else brings in the same way.

This threefold examination is more useful than looking for a dramatic difference. A rare skill, associated with stable ethics and a real ability to move a group forward, produces lasting singularity. Conversely, façade originality is exhausted as soon as the context becomes difficult, because it has nothing to offer when a decision has to be made.

What a closed mind costs

A closed mind produces measurable effects. In a project, it delays the reporting of bad news, it sets a schedule that has become unrealistic, it transforms correctable deviations into cost drifts. In a personal trajectory, he maintains habits that have ceased to be useful and relationships that no longer bring anything.

The warning signal is almost always the same: contrary information becomes irritating. When data is more disturbing than interesting, the decision has already been made before the analysis. It then remains to look for arguments to justify it, which is not the same thing as reasoning.

Three questions to reopen reasoning

The first: what information would make me change my mind? If no answer exists, it is no longer an analysis but a belief, and we must at least know that.

The second: who around me has serious reasons to contradict me, and have I really listened to them? Converging opinions reassure, they do not instruct. People who see the subject from another position, another profession or another country often provide the missing data.

The third: what would be the cost of my mistake if I persisted for six more months? This question shifts the debate from self-love to consequences. It makes uncertainty governable, which is the only reasonable objective.

Uniqueness at the service of a collective

A singularity that only serves to distinguish oneself quickly becomes a burden for others. A useful singularity can be recognized differently: it reduces a real difficulty, it raises the level of requirements without humiliating it, it leaves behind methods that others can adopt.

In a team, the truly unique person is not the loudest. It is the one whose absence is immediately noticed, because know-how, lucidity or a capacity for calm are immediately lacking. This recognition is not asked, it is observed.

A discipline rather than a mood

Revising your thoughts is not a moment of inspiration, it is a routine. It involves keeping a written record of one's hypotheses, setting in advance the indicators that will trigger a re-examination, and agreeing to regular meetings to compare one's convictions with the observed reality.

This work is unspectacular and rarely rewarded in the moment. However, it produces the essential: fairer decisions, taken earlier, and a reputation for seriousness which is worth more than any declaration of originality. Changing your mind when the facts require it does not weaken a trajectory. This is precisely what allows it to be driven.