OPEN YOUR MIND

BY MELANIE ROBITAILLE, SR. STAFF WRITER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER

I truly believe open mindedness is a pursuit; a journey with a destination which one must reconcile to never fully reach, but I also happen to think that it’s as much a matter of the heart as it is of the mind. After all, we’re first and foremost emotional beings, born of instinct, curiosity, and feeling. The mind sharpens over time, or as some might say, the heart hardens.

Google says it’s “the readiness to consider something without prejudice,” and then there’s George Bernard Shaw who once brutally said, “Those who can’t change their minds, can’t change anything.”

I don’t know about that, but I do know that when I take a look around right now, it seems open mindedness is a phrase a lot easier said than put into practice.

Being open minded involves a level of self-awareness that exists just below the surface of our everyday lives. It requires boldly going, side-stepping group think, and seeing from different perspectives. It’s a process that grows from a place of kindness, that asks of us a vulnerability that some have never called upon before or are comfortable tapping into.

Stop Looking In Your Baggage

We’re all a sum of our experiences, and well, honestly they’re not always good ones. We form opinions and beliefs out of these moments and can wear our traumas like clothes or store them away to carry around in invisible baggage; some carrying much more than others. We call upon our past experiences to help us navigate and move forward when we feel lost or uncertain. Should we always remember how far we’ve come? Absolutely, but I argue that if we keep looking back through those suitcases when we’re unsure, we’ll never actually change directions and we’ll find ourselves repeating patterns or falling back into old habits. Working on ourselves is always a good place to start. There are many ways to get help dealing with trauma.

Be Without A Doubt

Instead of allowing cynicism or derision to take hold of us as we experience life’s ups and downs, what if we worked on cultivating these attributes:

Curiosity: for what others think, and for all the possibilities around us

Empathy: to believe everyone is doing their best with what they have in each moment

Composure: to be questioned without reciprocating feelings of anger or fear

Humility: because no one knows it all, and changing comes with learning

Patience: to listen and hear, not just respond, because we all want to feel heard, and

Acceptance: since we all have a right to our opinions, and we can agree to disagree

Living wholeheartedly is a dream I hunt daily. It has shown me the miracle we all are, has taught me the beauty of our imperfections and has demonstrated the true power of and capacity in constantly wondering. I challenge you to take time to dwell in possibility.

Room For Our Views

Every time we turn around a new, faster way of communicating, sharing information, or reaching people is released, and the pace at which we live seems to hasten year after year. We all fall prey to being over-booked or over-stimulated by technology at different times, and both can directly inhibit our availability to process the many heavy topics out there, which in turn can cause overwhelm and lead to total shut down or burn out.

Without time to consider information, how do we generate truly informed opinions?

Consciously make room to sit with your thoughts and in your emotions to better understand why you think and feel the way you do. Find a quiet place or space in which to get comfortable and remove any and all distractions. At first you may find the quiet strangely discomforting but stick with it, try to keep your mind quiet until you’ve built up the ability to quiet your mind and focus on a question or feeling.

And in your efforts to learn more about a topic, remember we owe it to ourselves to look at both sides of a story or argument, because much of technology is guided by algorithms that are programmed to feed us more of what we search for. So the next time you want to get a better understanding of something, why not search for a new perspective in books or audio books, documentary videos, or podcasts. If we all put open mindedness into practice, we become part of a global awakening and shifting of perspective.