There is a moment in most conversations where something shifts. You started out curious. You were genuinely interested in the topic. But somewhere along the way, your body tensed up. Your voice changed. You stopped listening and started preparing your next point. That shift tells you something important about what you are actually doing.
Most people think they are seeking truth when they are really defending territory. The two feel similar from the inside, which is part of the problem. Both involve thinking hard about a topic. Both involve making arguments. But they lead in opposite directions, and knowing which one you are doing makes all the difference.
The Body Knows Before the Mind Does
Pay attention to what happens physically when someone challenges something you believe. If you are defending beliefs vs seeking truth, the challenge feels like information. It might be uncomfortable, but there is an openness to it. You can consider the point without your heart racing.
If you are defending a belief, the challenge feels like an attack. The chest tightens. The jaw clenches. There is heat in the body that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room. This physical response happens before any conscious thought. It is the nervous system identifying a threat.
This distinction matters because beliefs that need defending are often beliefs that have become part of your identity. You are not protecting an idea. You are protecting a version of yourself that depends on that idea being true. The body responds accordingly.
Signs You Have Crossed the Line
There are patterns that show up when someone moves from inquiry into defense. Noticing these patterns in yourself is the first step toward doing something different.
One sign is selective attention. You start focusing only on evidence that supports your position and dismissing anything that contradicts it. The contradicting evidence does not get serious consideration. It gets labeled as flawed, biased, or irrelevant.
Another sign is emotional investment in being right. The outcome of the conversation starts to feel personally important. Losing the argument would mean something about you, not just about the topic. This investment changes how you process information.
A third sign is the inability to state the opposing view fairly. When you are seeking truth, you can articulate why someone might believe differently. When you are defending, the opposing view becomes a caricature. You argue against the weakest version of it rather than the strongest.
The Comfort of Certainty
There is a reason people default to defending beliefs rather than questioning them. Certainty feels good. It provides stability. It tells you who you are and what side you are on. Questioning that certainty opens up discomfort that most people would rather avoid.
Author Ron Patterson explores this tendency in his book Blind to the Blatantly Obvious. He points out that humans have a remarkable capacity to avoid seeing what contradicts their existing beliefs. The avoidance is not conscious. It happens automatically, below the level of awareness. People genuinely do not see what they do not want to see.
This is not a character flaw. It is how the brain works. But knowing about it creates the possibility of catching yourself in the act. Of noticing when the shutters come down and choosing to keep them open instead.
What Seeking Truth Actually Looks Like
Truth-seeking has a different quality than belief-defending. There is less urgency to it. Less need to win. The goal is not to prove something but to find out something.
People who are genuinely seeking truth ask different questions. Instead of asking how to defend their position, they ask what would change their mind. Instead of looking for flaws in opposing arguments, they look for what might be valid in them. Instead of treating the conversation as a competition, they treat it as a collaboration.
This does not mean abandoning all positions or becoming wishy-washy about everything. It means holding positions loosely enough that new information can actually get through. It means being more committed to accuracy than to consistency.
Making the Shift
Moving from defense to inquiry is not a one-time decision. It is something you have to do repeatedly, in the middle of conversations, when your body is telling you to fight.
The first step is simply noticing. Catching yourself in the moment when curiosity turns into defensiveness. That moment of recognition creates a gap where choice becomes possible.
The second step is asking yourself what you are protecting. Usually it is not the idea itself but some sense of self that depends on the idea. Seeing that clearly can loosen the grip.
The third step is getting genuinely curious about the other perspective. Not as a debate tactic, but as an actual attempt to see what someone else sees. This is harder than it sounds because it requires setting aside the need to be right.
Patterson’s work suggests that most of what we consider thinking is actually rationalization. The conclusion comes first, and the reasons come after. Reversing this pattern takes practice. It means building the habit of questioning your own conclusions with the same rigor you apply to conclusions you disagree with.
The payoff is not just being right more often. It is the freedom that comes from not needing to defend territory that was never really yours to begin with. Beliefs you arrived at through genuine inquiry do not need defending. They can be updated when better information comes along. That flexibility is what truth-seeking actually produces.
