Don't Get Used to Being Right

Where there's a wrong, there's an opportunity to learn.

It's always sobering when somebody points out you are wrong. When you find out that you are too often right about many things, the reward circuits within your brain actually rewire to reinforce a superior opinion of yourself. This concept is called illusory superiority, the idea that you think you are better than you actually are. What's frightening, however, is that this can happen at an early age.

When at a young age, many people may tend to think they have mastered a specific particular domain. This kind of illusory superiority is what drives us to become stubborn and repress creativity and learning. Since doing the things we are good at provide a rewarding response in our brain, we see no need to attempt the things we may be bad at in fear of doing something wrong.

For a lot of people, this is just a phase. Eventually, most will realize that there is still much to learn. Unfortunately, many hold on to this illusory superiority for the rest of their lives. This gives rise to the Dunning-Kruger effect, where under average individuals mistakenly rate their abilities above average.

Just remember, sometimes it's good to be wrong.