“That thing you said about what makes your company special, it’s not true,” someone said in a meeting I was at the other day, with utter confidence. “I know two other companies who have the exact same qualities.” 

I was very surprised, because the process of arriving at the decision was thorough, and involved vigorous research and debate, over several weeks, and so I piped up: “Please can you share with us those two companies?”

Pause. 

“I don’t have any companies to mentioned now,” he replied after a too-short pause. “But I just know that there are.” 

I didn’t need to say anything after that. 

Too many of us live our lives like that. We hold absolute certainties about lives, ourselves, and other people. Even though we have absolutely no evidence for these uninvestigated thoughts, beliefs and opinions. 

Sadly, even when others point us to the flaws of our thinking, we reject the information. We insist on what we ‘know’. Because certainty is often more important to us than truth.