B L Razdan
True love means you love a person for what they are, not for what you think they should be. Wayne Dyer
People are very open-minded about new things…as long as they’re exactly like the old ones! Charles Kettering
If you are tired of looking at the world in the same old way, it might be time to broaden your horizons. Becoming more open-minded can help you live an exciting, inquisitive life in which you never stop learning or growing. By making just a few changes to your daily routine, you can open up your mind and say goodbye to your old close-minded ways. Open-mindedness is the willingness to search actively for evidence against one’s favored beliefs, plans, or goals, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available. Being open-minded does not imply that one is indecisive, wishy-washy, or incapable of thinking for one’s self. After considering various alternatives, an open-minded person can take a firm stand on a position and act accordingly.
The opposite of open-mindedness is what is called the myside bias which refers to the pervasive tendency to search for evidence and evaluate evidence in a way that favors your initial beliefs. Most people show myside bias, but some are more biased than others.
You can’t be in charge of everything in your life. Sure, this may sound a bit broad, but the unknown can really mean something as simple as taking a different route to work, finally accepting that coffee date with your neighbor, or seeing a movie by a director you’ve never heard of. If you want to be more open-minded, then the first thing you have to do is embrace something that is completely foreign to you.
Keep an open mind about things you have never done before. Close-minded people are famous for forming negative opinions of things they have never even tried. They may hate the other pizza place in town without even setting foot in the door, or they think the vegan movement is completely silly without ever trying it themselves. So, the next time you catch yourself espousing a negative opinion about something, ask yourself what evidence you have to support your ideas.
Head out to a party or lunch with a new friend. Though you don’t have to say yes to every invitation, you can make a habit of saying yes 50% more and going to parties or places where you never thought you’d end up. It could be a potluck at your neighbor’s house, your aunt’s yearly barbecue that you always skip, or even a poetry reading your friend has been trying to get you to go to for months. Exposing yourself to a wide variety of events will make you more open-minded.
Acknowledge that other people have opinions too. You could do this with almost anything in your life: politics, religion, education, personal beliefs, etc. You don’t have to change your mind or bend any of your morals, but try to see things from the other side. You’ll become more open-minded and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This doesn’t mean you have to change your mind, but it will help you have a more open-minded outlook. Many close-minded people view things in a negative light. The next time you catch a negative thought crossing your brain – or even the next time one escapes your lips – counter it with a positive thought. It might help to think of 3 positive things for every 1 negative thought you have.
Try something new and break your old habits. It doesn’t have to be anything huge: maybe you have a bagel and cream cheese for breakfast instead of eggs and toast. Maybe you ride your bike to work instead of taking the subway. Getting out of a rut can really help open up your mind and help you start new habits. Routines are a good way to bring order and stability to your life, and there’s nothing wrong with them. But if you want to be more open-minded, mixing it up once in a while will show you that there’s more than one way to live your life.
Pick a variety of things to read and just dive in. You should read widely: non-fiction, literary fiction, magazines, newspapers, blogs, or anything in between. Read a book about a country you have never been to, or a book about a political movement you don’t know much about. The more you know the more power you’ll have to make educated decisions and to be more open-minded. Spend a couple of hours at a bookshop or the library perusing the shelves until you find a book that speaks out to you. Then, make a goal of finishing it by the weekend. Join a book club by looking for one online or in your area. This will make you even more open to a wide variety of literature and will expose you to a numb.
Being open-minded is very useful inasmuch as many benefits accrue to individuals who develop this positive trait. Research suggests that open-minded, cognitively complex individuals are less swayed by singular events and are more resistant to suggestion and manipulation; open-minded individuals are better able to predict how others will behave and are less prone to projection and open-minded individuals tend to score better on tests of general cognitive ability like the SAT or an IQ test even as we don’t know whether being open-minded makes one smarter or vice versa.
Social and cognitive psychologists have noted widespread errors in judgment/thinking to which we are all vulnerable. In order to be open-minded, we have to work against these basic tendencies, leading virtue ethicists to call open-mindedness a corrective virtue. In addition to the myside bias described above, there are three other cognitive tendencies that work against open-minded thinking. These are Selective Exposure, Primacy Effects and Polarization. We tend to maintain our beliefs by selectively exposing ourselves to information that we already know is likely to support those beliefs. Liberals tend to read liberal newspapers, and Conservatives tend to read conservative newspapers. The evidence that comes first matters more than evidence presented later. Trial lawyers are very aware of this phenomenon. Once jurors form a belief, that belief becomes resistant to counterevidence. We also tend to be less critical of evidence that supports our beliefs than evidence that runs counter to our beliefs.
Research also suggests that people are more likely to be open-minded when they are not under time pressure. Individuals are more likely to be open-minded when they believe they are making an important decision. Some research suggests that the way in which an idea is presented can affect how open-minded someone is when considering it. For example, a typical method of assessing open-mindedness in the laboratory is to ask a participant to list arguments on both sides of a complicated issue (e.g., the death penalty, abortion, animal testing). What typically happens is that individuals are able to list far more arguments on their favored side. However, if the researcher then encourages the participant to come up with more arguments on the opposing side, most people are able to do so without too much difficulty. It seems that individuals have these counter-arguments stored in memory but they don’t draw on them when first asked.
Catherine Freemire, a clinical therapist and professional coach renowned for her creative thinking has come up with three exercises for building open-mindedness which are worth trying. First, select an emotionally charged, debatable topic (e.g., abortion, prayer in school, healthcare reform, the current situation in Afghanistan) and take the opposite side from your own. Write five valid reasons to support this view. Second, recall a time when you were wronged by someone in the past and generate three plausible reasons why this person inadvertently or intentionally wronged you. Third, think of a topic that you consistently argue about with your teen or grown child and take their position and think of 3 substantial reasons why their point of view is valid.
Open-mindedness involves being receptive to a wide variety of ideas, arguments, and information. Being open-minded is generally considered a positive quality. It is a necessary ability in order to think critically and rationally. If you are not open to other ideas and perspectives, it is difficult to see all of the factors that contribute to problems or come up with effective solutions. In an increasingly polarized world, being able to step outside your comfort zone and consider other perspectives and ideas is important. This, however, doesn’t mean that being open-minded is necessarily easy. Being open to new ideas and experiences can sometimes lead to confusion and cognitive dissonance when we learn new things that conflict with existing beliefs. However, being able to change and revise outdated or incorrect beliefs is an important part of learning and personal growth. To enjoy the benefits of being open-minded, work on building this ability.
Being more open-minded means enjoying some useful and powerful benefits. Open-mindedness helps you gain new insights, have new experiences, achieve personal growth, become mentally strong, feel more optimistic and learn new things to enrich your experience and life both.
The author is formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) Chandigarh.
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