Recently I read Think Again by Adam Grant, a book that talks about rethinking and evaluating our ideas and updating them as we evolve. He brings up a great point how we never revisit our ideas and beliefs and update them as we go through life. We get caught in the complacent that seems comfortable and so convenient to stay there, and frankly seems like a lot of work to have to rethink all of our ideas. His suggestion is to reframe it to being like a scientist and experiment with different ideas and see what fits for us and continue with that idea until it no longer rings true for us.
This book reminded me of something I had forgotten about, a promise I had made to myself as a child. While forgotten, it was one of those things that I had already ingrained in myself and didn’t need to continually remind myself of it. Reflecting back, I see it’s proved helpful and also detrimental to me.
The promise I made? I had promised myself that I would NEVER be stuck in my ways, I didn’t ever want to be narrow minded.
I often saw how adults were recommended to try or do something that would help them, but they were so narrow minded that they refused and believed their idea or way of doing it was the best way. It was so frustrating and I didn’t understand why adults couldn’t be open to new things. Often I was told that “you can’t train an old horse”.
I didn’t ever want to be that old horse.
“I didn’t ever want to be that old horse.”
I wanted to stay open minded to anything and everything, I wanted to explore all the possibilities available to me and see where they led me.
At first I thought it was best for me to not have opinions, I tried to stay quiet, even though on some things I did have opinions. I distinctly remember the first night of living in NYC for my internship, I was going out to dinner with a couple of my new roommates.
I didn’t want to say I wasn’t hungry since we had just met that day and wanted to get to know them! While perusing the menu, nothing stood out to me, and I said it didn’t matter what we got. My one roommate burst out “omg can you have an opinion for once.” I didn’t take it personally though, but I didn’t say anything either.
I followed my promise a little too literally up until recently, as I had gotten to the point where I wanted to believe others over what I sometimes knew was right for me based on my gut instinct. It got to the point where I got sick of living my own life to how others told me to live it.
I wanted to take my power back.
It wasn’t until this last year or two that I realized that I can live life how I want to live it and follow my own intuition while still being open to what others have to say without worrying that my essence and opinions are being threatened. I wrote a blog post that hits on this topic more in depth, called Segregation: A Bystander Effect?, if you want to check it out.
I also realized that there’s a difference between instinct and opinion. I now try to follow my instinct without needing to ask others about what they think, while remaining more open to discuss my opinions.
So far, this revised theory seems to be better suited for me!
So how can we stay open to others opinions without it feeling like it’s threatening the very idea of us? I did wonder this especially with polarity being so intense lately, especially with politics.
Adam Grant suggests that you have to allow your opinions to be separate from yourself, and continue to see yourself and your views as something that can be changed. I was surprised at my initial reaction when I first heard this, fear bubbled up inside of me. I felt scared at the idea of letting go of my opinions and dissolving them from myself. It’s the fear of the unknown.
What if I became someone I didn’t like? Someone totally different to how I think now? But almost as immediately as I got these rushing fears, I got a sense of relief and comfort in asking myself: Do I believe that at the core of my being, I am a good person? Do I believe I am being guided by love and magic? Yes.
I felt those thoughts help give me courage to explore more and not be scared that I’ll be guided in the “wrong” direction, but actually guided and led towards an even greater version of myself than I had ever known.
Overall, I highly recommend his book! I am allowing myself to experiment and rethink my ideas in small ways, baby steps to make it seem doable. Comment your thoughts below!
Love and Curiosity Always,
Cindy Garza
Formerly, The Serene Sol