How To Open Your Mind? Keys To Adopting New Perspectives
Many years ago, Albert Einstein said: “the mind is a parachute, it only works when it is opened.” And it is worth asking if we can develop positively as people with a closed mentality.
Throughout this article we will talk about how to open your mind as well as the importance of open-mindedness and the benefits that having an attitude open to change brings us.
It is obvious that living life with an open mind can provide us with numerous benefits and advantages, both when it comes to experiencing positive emotions and perceiving and taking advantage of the countless opportunities that are presented to us.
Keeping an open mind is essential for personal well-being and stress management, as well as to help us achieve our vital goals and maintain a good relationship with the rest of society. Ultimately, it is our ability to adapt cognitively and emotionally to those changes in life in the face of which we cannot remain impassive, living with our old habits and mental shortcuts.
Although the concept “mental openness” refers to a personality trait, it can be trained and developed through different techniques and steps, helping us to be more open to changes, flexible and understanding.
In the workplace, having an open mind is extremely useful in jobs that require creativity or are related to science and research. On the other hand, in our daily lives, keep an open mind helps us live without prejudice.
6 steps to open our mind
As mentioned above, although open-mindedness is a personality trait, it can be exercised and improved, thus providing us with several benefits on a personal, social and professional level.
Below we will see a series of techniques or methods that can help us develop mental openness.
1. Practice listening
Listening to other people gives us a great amount of information about what surrounds us and most importantly, provides us with other points of view about life that can give us another perspective on certain aspects of our world.
However, listening does not mean hearing. This listening must be active, eliminating our prejudices and allowing other people to express their opinions. Always with respect from both sides.
2. Question things and ourselves
This includes both what surrounds us and our own beliefs. Maintaining a critical stance with ourselves and with what surrounds us is essential to develop mental openness, since this It does not imply that we have to blindly accept or believe everything that surrounds us.
People tend to assume as true what the media or society transmit to us, as well as not questioning what we have always believed in.
However, to develop and maintain an open mind it is necessary that, from time to time, we reflect and question our own decisions, beliefs and customs, as well as the information that comes to us from other media.
Usually, people tend to stay in those places or situations where we feel safe, where there are no risks and where unforeseen events appear in the smallest number of possible occasions.
In this way, the person maintains a routine without contingencies or shocks, but also without incentives or motivations, and with the risk of developing a dependency on what provides us with this security.
This is called the “comfort zone” and although to a certain extent it is positive, we should not settle into it. A good way to get out of our comfort zone is make small changes and actions that help us get out of it little by little.
These small changes will give rise to larger ones and little by little we will get used to living new experiences that will help us develop other perspectives of everything that surrounds us and expand the vision of our reality.
4. Don’t be afraid to be different
This step is closely related to the previous two. Assume as your own the customs and behaviors that society imposes on us will not help us develop open-mindedness.
To get rid of them, the first step is to eliminate the fear of being different from the rest, as well as downplaying what other people may think about us.
5. Don’t be afraid of mistakes
At the same moment we decide to leave our comfort zone and open our mind to other beliefs or life experiences, we must accept that we may be wrong at many moments in our lives.
However, this cannot be a barrier when it comes to improving our well-being. Make mistakes gives us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and these lessons will help us develop and grow as more complete people.
Therefore, it is necessary to get rid of the fear of making mistakes. Since it is impossible to develop an open mind if fear conditions us both to think and act.
6. Open ourselves to what surrounds us
The world around us, people, things, nature, can serve as stimulation and inspiration for any area of our life.
Learning from other people and cultures will give us new ideas and points of view that can be useful to us in the future. And doing it continuously will help us keep an open mind and enjoy our lives much more.
Benefits of keeping an open mind
Once we are aware of what we want to achieve and the steps or techniques we need to follow to achieve it, we can begin to enjoy all those benefits that an open mind can provide us.
Among the advantages of open-mindedness are the following:
