Strong Opinions, Weakly Held - Bob Sutton

Apparently the Palo Alto Institute for the future have been giving advice for helping people to develop attitudes for facing the future:
"to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”"
Basically strong opinions give us energy to develop arguments for them and to test them, weak opinions don't get our juices flowing -we don't care enough about them. The 'weakly held' bit is that we nevertheless need to be open to disconfirming evidence and to get past confirmation bias.

When I read that I felt that there was something here about religious or spiritual beliefs. On the basis of this argument, it would seem at first sight that having firm beliefs is a good thing as long as we also develop critical skills and reflective practice -or am I (a practical theologian with a brief for reflective practice) simply exhibiting confirmation bias?

See Strong Opinions, Weakly Held - Bob Sutton

Of course it would also indicate that we should respect and not vilify politicians who change their minds in the light of evidence see here. Interestingly, on another tack, I found a sentence in that last one that resonated strongly with me. I've noted the same in myself and others over the last few years: "... study after study documented in the book Drive (Dan Pink) – and find out that high stakes and increased pressure actually inhibit performance on tasks that are complex and creative." We need 'space' to think our best: retreats, time out, leisure, times for discursive non-directed chatting.