Skeptics are annoying.
We shouldn’t give them the time of day because they’re just contrarians wasting our energy. We shouldn’t humor skeptics, right?
They want to be difficult.
They want to be different.
They want to challenge our beliefs.
Beliefs that we hold on too tightly.
Preaching to the converted is just so much easier. They believe what we believe. It’s a beautiful and easy thing.
But what if skeptics….
… know something we don’t?
… could offer us a new perspective?
… may even be right depending on the context?
We all go through days we wish people would just agree with us: our kids, family members, friends, teammates, employees, and bosses.
Persuading people who are on the fence takes up valuable time and our energy.
But it’s not about persuading them to agree with us.
It’s about understanding why they have doubts and concerns, and why they are actively choosing to oppose our viewpoints.
If we give them the time, we may discover they are warranted in having those doubts and concerns because they’ve experienced something that we haven’t.
If we give them the time, maybe they’ll teach us something we didn’t know to be possible.
But if we stick to only giving people the time of day who are in agreement with us we learn nothing new. Those are the people who reaffirm what we already believe and what we already know.
It’s convenient to converse with them.
But we remain unchanged.
It’s when we pause to hear from those who don’t agree with us that we learn something new.
By giving skeptics the time of day to convey their perspective, we learn where they’re coming, why they feel the way they do, and why they think the way they think.
In the end, we can still agree to disagree, walk away, and still hold on to our beliefs, but at least we have an understanding of why.
