If you’re unwilling to be wrong, you’ll never be anything new.

Why are we so scared to say something now and later find out we got it wrong?

Everything you know for sure was once a question you were brave enough to ask.

We don’t often think of it that way.
We imagine knowledge as something we possess, carry, protect.

We tell ourselves that to be worthy of our place at the table, we must know.
And that knowing should be definite, final. We can’t speak up and then change our minds later. We can’t call attention to ourselves and be found out to still be in the process of understanding.

But truth is not something you own. It’s something you approach.

And the approach is rarely graceful.
It requires missteps.
It demands you stand in the embarrassment of saying the wrong thing.
It asks you to release the idea that your value lies in never needing correction.

The most interesting people I know are the ones willing to be wrong out loud.
The ones willing to say I don’t know, but I want to find out.

There’s something in us that fears being seen unfinished.
We want to appear cultivated, unassailable.
But certainty is not a virtue when it’s used to define the finish line that you’re never going to arrive at.

If you refuse to be wrong, you refuse to change.
If you refuse to change, you refuse to live.
If you refuse to live, then you really do have no business in telling others how it’s done.

Being wrong is not reckless or thoughtless.
It’s trusting that your mind can hold complexity.
That you can survive being mistaken.

There’s a quiet dignity in admitting you were wrong.
It tells the world you are paying attention.
It says you are teachable, movable, still capable of wonder.

You are in process. We are in process. All of this *waves arms dramatically* is unendingly in process.

How could we know? For sure?

Knowing is impossible. Boring.

We must try to find the ways that we are wrong.

The hardest work is not convincing everyone you’re right and finding stances, truths, insights and opinions that can’t change.
It’s allowing yourself to be honest before you’re sure.
It’s sharing what you see from where you stand, knowing you might see it differently tomorrow.
It’s letting your thinking breathe, even if it falters.
It’s sharing the questions instead of the answers.

It’s allowing yourself, and your voice, to evolve in public.

Why are we so scared to say something now and later find out we got it wrong?
As if growth should be hidden away, private and silent, so no one can witness you in the vulnerable act of becoming.

We want our ideas to be fully formed before we share them.
We want our beliefs to be above criticism.
We want to speak once and for all — so we never have to be embarrassed by what we didn’t yet know.

But that’s not how knowing works.
That’s not how voice works.
That’s not how any of us really learn.

We see clearer because we’re willing to see at all — even when the picture changes.
We speak better because we’re willing to speak at all — even when the words are unfinished.
We know more because we risk being wrong — now, so we can be truer later.

If you cannot stand to be wrong tomorrow, you will say nothing today.

When you risk being wrong, you open the possibility of knowing something new.
You open the possibility of becoming someone new.

This is not a flaw in you.
This is your humanity.
Your mind is supposed to change.
Your understanding is supposed to deepen.

You are supposed to be in an internal becoming of as many different versions of you that you should be lucky enough to meet.

And none of that is possible if you cannot stand to be corrected.

Because the cost of never being wrong is never truly knowing anything at all. Even yourself.

Imagine we all swallowed our voices because they might not be right again tomorrow.

Imagine we refused to say anything at all until we could guarantee it was The One True Thing™.

We’d never write. Never speak. Never make art. Never have an argument over a pint. Never fall in love with the wrong person and learn something astonishing about who we really are.

We’d never grow.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be an eternal fucker-upper.

Someone who gets it wrong repeatedly.
Joyfully.
Publicly.

Who leaves a breadcrumb trail of contradictions, revisions, unflattering clarifications.

Someone who refuses to fossilise into certainty when there’s so much left to see.

Because we don’t need more people who are always right.
We have LinkedIn for that.
We need more people willing to be honest before they’re sure.
Willing to try before they’re ready.
Willing to think out loud even when the thoughts are unfinished.

Willing to say it wrong now so they can say it better later.

Because that’s how you actually learn.
How you change.
How you, eventually I presume, actually know.

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Your writing practice

Write about something you used to believe that you no longer do.
Let yourself tell the whole story — not just the tidy conclusion. Where did you learn it? Why did it feel true? What made it start to crack?

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Hi I’m Lois. Writer & forever fucker-upper of all the things. The Smoking Area is where we say the things we’re not supposed to say out loud — and then figure out how to turn them into something that matters. If you want more of that — more words to shake you awake, more questions to sit with, more invitations to write honestly before you’re sure — subscribe and stay awhile.

And if you want to go even deeper, I’m hosting a 5-day writing retreat in Costa Rica this January.

Five days to strip back the performance. To sit with the questions you don’t have answers to yet. To write honestly, imperfectly, bravely. To let your voice evolve in real time.