I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence.

The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information or evidence. It's not that they lack conviction in their beliefs, but more so that they've developed enough self-awareness to understand what it would take to change them.

The world will pressure you to stubbornly resist such change. To cling to every belief as though it might be your last. But there's immense power in resisting that pressure.

I like to think of it as a software update. The update is never perfect, but it's an improvement upon the older version. It's a reminder that the goal isn't to be right, but to slowly, consistently get closer to the truth.

When I'm getting to know people, I often ask them what they've changed their mind on recently. It's an interesting way to go deep in a conversation.

A friend recently flipped the question on me.

After a bunch of thought and reflection, here's my reply:

7 things I've come to believe recently...

1. You have to squint harder as you get older.

Last week, my mom and I were driving to pick up food when she told me she recently had a profound realization.

As she and my dad have gotten older, a lot of the advice they get about feeling happy is related to the past.

You’ve had such a great life. You had career success. You raised good kids. You made all these great memories.

And so on.

But, she pointed out, it's not particularly helpful. Because happiness isn't governed by the past.

Thinking about it, I reasoned that it's more a function of:

1. Gratitude in the present
2. Excitement for the future

And as you get older, you have to squint harder to get that excitement. A lot of the "givens" you've taken for granted are no longer guaranteed. Things like having meaningful work. Your own health. Healthy loved ones. Travel and experiences. All of that is increasingly uncertain with age.

So the excitement becomes more difficult to see. It's not as obvious as it once was.

My advice (to my parents, myself, and anyone else):

Take action to put excitement on the calendar. Big or small. Take up new hobbies. Read your favorite books. Plan the trips. Do the things.

And then, squint harder. It's there, you just have to push yourself to see it.

2. The fastest way to improve your life is to sign up for a physical side quest.

I used to think that life change was all about having a clear set of systems, rules, and goals to guide your life. You establish those, track them, and watch your life improve.

But it's much simpler than that:

Just sign up for a side quest (preferably a physical one).

It could be a race, competition, event. Really anything. Maybe a marathon, Hyrox, long hike, or a weekend rafting trip. Something that scares you just a little bit. Just enough to spark action.

Your day becomes more structured with the training for the side quest. You sleep deeper because you're tired from the training. You eat cleaner because your body wants the healthy fuel. You look better from the movement. You feel better from the momentum.

Everything falls into alignment around the one small decision to sign up for that event.

So, what's your side quest going to be?

3. The best conversations happen when you allow silence.

For most of my life, I was deeply uncomfortable with silence in a conversation.

The void would send my insecure brain into overdrive, assuming the other person was thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about me.

So, I'd avoid silence at all costs, filling every natural gap or pause with some leap, misdirection, or non sequitur.

But the older I get, the more I realize that the pause is often where the real depth starts to form.

If you treat conversations like a game of tennis, firing the ball back and forth as quickly and strategically as possible, you never get very far. It's transactional. It turns every conversation into something of a battle. You're facing down an opponent. You vs. them.

The best conversations are ventilated. They have space. There's no rush to hit the ball back. They're about a journey, not an outcome.

The next time you feel the pressure to fill the silence, resist it. Then watch what the other person does with the space you just gave them.

4. There's no such thing as the right decision.

I often wonder how many extraordinary people waste their entire lives obsessing over making the right decision.

Caught in an overthinking trap. Second-guessing every single move. Gathering more information. Planning out every step of the path.

I've been there.

And I've come to believe that it's driven by a single flawed belief:

That the decision is what matters.

There are good decisions (clear logic, backed by evidence) and bad decisions (made in the heat of emotion, with none), but there are no right decisions.

Ultimately, a decision becomes right through the actions that follow it, not the decision itself.

In my own life, most of my "wrong" decisions were really just inconsistent follow-through. I made the call, then failed to back it with disciplined daily effort. A decision isn't right or wrong in a vacuum. But it's always easier to blame the decision than to hold yourself to the work that follows.

Make a decision, then make it the right one with your actions.

5. The most underrated relationships bring peace.

Life is filled with chaos. There's really no avoiding it. The storms, big and small, are inevitable.

But some people just seem very good at attracting them.

In my 20s, I had a higher tolerance for chaos. I could have a crazy weekend, deal with drama, sleep like crap, lose my voice, and still bounce back and hold it together.

Maybe it's just getting old, but my tolerance for chaos isn't what it used to be.

If there's one thing I value most in my relationships now, it's that they bring peace. It doesn't mean there are no storms. Just that they're never of our own creation.

And honestly, in my 30s, I love having the sun on my face.

6. There are millions of ways to be happy but only one reliable way to be unhappy.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

This beautiful line is the opening of Leo Tolstoy's famous book, Anna Karenina. It's considered one of the most iconic opening lines in literature.

And I think it's incorrect.

People are happy in a lot of ways, but the one common theme among all the unhappy people I know:

They constantly compare themselves to others. Their entire life is measured on the basis of how it stacks up to someone else's.

The fastest way to kill something beautiful is to compare it to something else.

And with social media algorithms that intentionally thrust the most unfavorable comparisons right in front of your face, it's very hard to resist.

But if happiness is your goal, resist you must.

7. The happiest people are very difficult to rush.

I recently sat next to a gentleman on a flight who was returning from his 60th high school reunion. We struck up a conversation and ended up chatting for the whole time in the air.

When we landed, as is seemingly customary, everyone leapt up to grab their bags as fast as possible. Except for him. He sat there, sipping the plastic cup that held his glass of wine from the flight.

I asked if I could grab his bag, but he just shook his head. I must have given him a funny look, because he smiled:

"I never understood the rush. We're all going to the same place, after all."

I figured he meant baggage claim, but as I walked out of the airport, I realized my mistake. The same place was more meta than I originally understood.

And he was in no rush to beat everyone there.

As ​I wrote​ a few weeks ago:

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

The happiest people always strike me as very difficult to rush.

They act slowly and deliberately. When they move with urgency, it's because they want to, not because of some arbitrary pressure.

It's small things that give it away:

• They let people go ahead of them in traffic.
• They greet workers at a coffee shop.
• They look up instead of down at their phone.

I've started trying to embrace a few tiny acts of slow rebellion per day. And while the rush instinct is still there, every time I resist it, I think of that gentleman.

Smiling, sipping his airplane red wine, in no rush to beat anyone to the place we're all headed.

So, now I'll do to you what my friend did to me:

What have you changed your mind on recently?