👋 Hi fellow dumdums,

We tend to treat our beliefs like permanent fixtures — not ideas to explore, but bulky furniture: wobbly, outdated, hard to move, and slightly weird-smelling in a way that suggests unresolved trauma and maybe soup.

But think about this . . .

“If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”

Your mind isn’t a granite monument.

It’s more like a poorly managed Airbnb — people (ideas) come and go, someone definitely broke the Keurig, the remote is sticky, and yet somehow it still functions.

Barely. But it functions.

If our minds had a greatest hits album of bad habits, this would be Track One:

Clinging to thoughts we outgrew six jobs, four haircuts, and at least one identity we used during a semester abroad.

Changing your mind isn’t flaky.

It’s high-performance mental maintenance.

Like taking your brain to the gym so it doesn’t pull a hamstring mid-conversation with your cousin who just got into Bitcoin and now refers to all traditional currency as “peasant paper.”

People act like changing your mind is a personality defect.

Like you’ve broken some ancient oath to remain confidently wrong until death — and now your ancestors are shaking their heads in matching cloaks, deeply disappointed but still somehow passive-aggressive about it.

But in truth?

Changing your mind is Formula 1 pit stop energy.

Swap the tires. Clean the windshield. Throw out the stale assumptions. Possibly replace that rattling belief you picked up from a roommate who claimed kombucha cured heartbreak.

And here’s the part nobody talks about:

Changing your mind doesn’t mean you’re unstable.

It means your brain is still taking calls.

Most people stop updating their thoughts sometime around middle school and just coast through life defending whatever opinions survived gym class.

But when you actually change your mind? That’s your brain waking up from a long nap, stretching its legs, and asking, “Wait… are we still doing that?”

It’s not weakness. It’s not confusion.

It’s your mind checking in to see if anything's rotting in the fridge.

Researchers call this cognitive flexibility.

It’s your brain’s ability to pivot, adapt, reframe — and not fully self-destruct when life throws you a breakup, a plumbing disaster, or an unexpected existential spiral in a CVS parking lot.

One study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that people with higher cognitive flexibility had lower stress and better overall well-being.

Another, from Contemporary Educational Psychology, showed it boosts creativity and problem-solving.

And a third one (because three makes it science) from Trends in Neuroscience and Education found it helps kids learn faster, keeps adults nimble, and helps older brains avoid turning into expired yogurt filled with bingo dates and conspiracy theories.

So yes — changing your mind can literally change your life.

Not just because it makes you less exhausting at parties, but because it helps your brain stretch, breathe, and stay weird in the healthiest way possible.

You’re not wishy-washy.

You’re neurobiologically elegant.

Which is, in case you were wondering, the sexiest kind of elegant.

🧠 Dumb Word of the Day: Metanoia

(noun) — a profound shift in one’s thinking; a change of heart

Sounds like something you’d contract in a Greek tragedy. But it’s actually that rare, glorious moment when your brain goes, “Okay. I was wrong. Let’s pivot before this gets weirder.”

It’s not a meltdown. It’s not enlightenment.

It’s just you — adjusting, recalculating, re-humaning.

This week, if something cracks open inside you and your thoughts try to shift?

Let it be metanoia.

Let it be messy.

Let it count.

Change Your Mind (On Purpose)

Pick one belief you hold with unreasonable confidence.

Something harmless but weirdly territorial — like how you insist that mornings are evil or that cilantro tastes like betrayal.

Now, for the next 24 hours: act like you believe the opposite.

Not forever. Not in public (unless you’re brave). Just long enough to let your brain squirm a little and ask, “Wait... who am I when I don’t believe this thing I’ve believed since 2007?”

Bonus points if the belief is about yourself.

Double bonus points if it makes you laugh.

Triple bonus points if it makes you call your therapist and say, “Okay, something’s happening.”

Let it be dumb. Let it be small. Let it be weirdly hard.

That’s the point.