You’re in a heated argument with someone that has been going on for fifteen minutes. You realized five minutes ago that you are wrong, but something urges you to keep going and try to win this argument even though you know that you’re wrong.

This urge is stubbornness and it permeates our school and has affected my life greatly. It is born as a natural ego protector and creates a situation where we are very sensitive to change and oppose it with hostility. Stubbornness not only prevents us from experiencing essential change, but makes us self-protective and self-conscious and causes us to inaccurately judge ourselves.

I see this problem throughout classroom discussions at school and as a mentality that needs fixing. People in discussion get worked up over their own opinions and not only are sometimes unwilling to address other opinions and listen to them, but view conversations of this manner as attacks.

When we are wrong or our views change, we need to learn to accept being wrong and learn how to move on and grow. When everyone is focused on being right in discussions, it creates this very stubborn atmosphere, but if we all learn to accept being wrong or accept shifting views after saying something it will make discussions a lot less toxic. After all, a discussion is meant to be fluid, and shifting of opinions is perfectly reasonable.

Another place where this problem exists is within advice. I have suffered the most through this portion of the problem. Sometimes when we receive advice, we have a tendency to take it as a hit to our work. However, this is a courtesy and not an attack and should be taken as extra help, not replacement or attacks.

When other people recommend stuff for me, I usually ignore it because I like to find stuff on my own. Recently I started branching out and this spring break I explored things I’d avoided stubbornly for a while and it helped me grow and like things that I didn’t know I enjoy, such as the Harry Potter books. We all have more room to grow within our lives and we need to try to explore this room and drop our egos, to better our learning and that of everyone around us.