The shiny new belief

What you believe defines your truths and believers on both sides of an issue are digging in, like trenches in the Ukraine, for a prolonged conflict.

Do you practice red medicine or blue medicine?

Are you an AI limitationist or evangelist?

Who's the NBA GOAT?

Does changing your mind about a red meat issue make you less authentic or just a "flip flopper", doomed to lose the Iowa caucus or a member of your family at Thanksgiving dinner?

On the other hand, having?strong opinions, loosely held?is a useful way to continuously push your character. If you have beliefs, you are firm in, the tests that life throws at you will be far more worthwhile. The wins matter more, and the failures shake you to your core. Sometimes it takes something quite dramatic to really teach you a lesson.

Other advantages are:

1. It communicates that you are open to other ideas
2. You acknowledge the evolution of what is truth at a given time, particularly in medicine and science. Do you believe gastric ulcers are still caused by stress?
3. It will shorten your failure resume
4. It's click bait on your Linkedin profile
5. It's not true for most people but makes a good story
6. Humble pie is an acquired taste. You might like it after a while.
7. It makes you sound like a Stanford entrepreneurship guru
8. You just need a legal pad to do it
9. It makes you sound smarter than ChatGPT
10. It is good practice if you decide to work for McKinsey as your next non-clinical side gig

If you want to hedge your bets, then repeat after me:

“I’m 90% sure we shouldn’t try to build our own social network.”

“I’m 50/50 on whether to do this with Cloud SQL or Cloud Datastore.”

“I have a low conviction hunch that the airplane icon will work better than the gift box.”

There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. Just don't change your mindset.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship