3.6 Understand how you can become radically open-minded.
No matter how open-minded you are now, it is something you can learn. To practice open-mindedness:
a. Regularly use pain as your guide toward quality reflection.
Mental pain often comes from being too attached to an idea when a person or an event comes along to challenge it. This is especially true when what is being pointed out to you involves a weakness on your part. This kind of mental pain is a clue that you are potentially wrong and that you need to think about the question in a quality way. To do this, first calm yourself down. This can be difficult: You will probably feel your amygdala kicking in through a tightening in your head, tension in your body, or an emerging sense of annoyance, anger, or irritability. Note these feelings when they arise in you. By being aware of such signals of closed-mindedness, you can use them as cues to control your behavior and guide yourself toward open-mindedness. Doing this regularly will strengthen your ability to keep your “higher-level you” in control. The more you do it, the stronger you will become.
b. Make being open-minded a habit.
The life that you will live is most simply the result of habits you develop. If you consistently use feelings of anger/frustration as cues to calm down, slow down, and approach the subject at hand thoughtfully, over time you’ll experience negative emotions much less frequently and go directly to the open-minded practices I just described.
Of course, this can be very hard for people to do in the moment because your “lower-level you” emotions are so powerful. The good news is that these “amygdala hijackings” don’t last long so even if you’re having trouble controlling yourself in the moment, you can also allow a little time to pass to give your higher-level you space to reflect in a quality way. Have others whom you respect help you too.
c. Get to know your blind spots.
When you are closed-minded and form an opinion in an area where you have a blind spot, it can be deadly. So take some time to record the circumstances in which you’ve consistently made bad decisions because you failed to see what others saw. Ask others—especially those who’ve seen what you’ve missed—to help you with this. Write a list, tack it up on the wall, and stare at it. If ever you find yourself about to make a decision (especially a big decision) in one of these areas without consulting others, understand that you’re taking a big risk and that it would be illogical to expect that you’ll get the results you think you will.
d. If a number of different believable people say you are doing something wrong and you are the only one who doesn’t see it that way, assume that you are probably biased.
Be objective! While it is possible that you are right and they are wrong, you should switch from a fighting mode to an “asking questions” mode, compare your believability with theirs, and if necessary agree to bring in a neutral party you all respect to break the deadlock.
e. Meditate.
I practice Transcendential Meditation and believe that it has enhanced my open-mindedness, higher-level perspective, equanimity, and creativity. It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight. I’m not saying that you have to meditate in order to develop this perspective; I’m just passing along that it has helped me and many other people and I recommend that you seriously consider exploring it.
f. Be evidence-based and encourage others to be the same.
Most people do not look thoughtfully at the facts and draw their conclusions by objectively weighing the evidence. Instead, they make their decisions basesd on what their deep-seated subconscious mind wants and then they filter the evidence to make it consistent with those desires. It is possible to become aware of this subconscious process happening and to catch yourself, or to allow others to catch you going down this path. When you’re approaching a decision, ask yourself: Can you point to clear facts (i.e., facts believable people wouldn’t dispute) leading to your view? If not, chances are you’re not being evidence-based.
g. Do everything in your power to help others also be open-minded.
Being calm and resonable in how you present your view will help prevent the “flight-or-fight” animal/amygdala reaction in others. Be reasonable and expect others to be reasonable. Ask them to point to the evidence that supports their point of view. Remember, it is not an agrument; it is an open exploration of what’s true. Demonstrating that you are taking in what they are telling you can be helpful.
h. Use evidence-based decision-making tools.
These principles were designed to help you get control over your lower-level/animal you and put your better, higher-level decision-making brain in charge.
What if you could unplug that lower part of your brain entirely and instead connect with a decision-making computer that gives you logically derived instructions, as we do with our investment systems? Suppose this computer-based decision-making machine has a much better track record than you because it captures more logic, processes more information more quickly, and make decisions without being emotionally hijacked. Would you use it? In confronting the challenges I‘ve faced in the course of my career I’ve created exactly such tools, and I am convinced that I would not have been nearly as successful without them. I have no doubt that in the years ahead such “machine-thinking” tools will continue to develop and that smart decision makers will learn how to integrate them into their thinking. I urge you to learn about them and consider using them.
i. Know whtn it’s best to stop fighting and have faith in your decision-making process.
It’s important that you think independently and fight for what you believe in, but there comes a time when it’s wiser to stop fighting for your view and move on to accepting what believable others think is best. This can be extremely difficult. But it’s smarter and ultimately better for you to be open-minded and have faith that the consensus of believable others is better than whatever you think. If you can’t understand their view, you’re probably just blind to their way of thinking. If you continue doing what you think is best when all the evidence and believable people are against you, you’re being dangerously arrogant.
The truth is that while most people can become radically open-minded, some can’t, even after they have repeatedly encountered lots of pain from betting that they were right when they were not. People who don’t learn radical open-mindedness don’t experience the metamorphosis that allows them to do much better. I mayself had to have that humility beaten into me by my crashes, especially my big one in 1982. Gaining open-mindedness doesn’t mean losing assertiveness. In fact, because it increases one’s odds of being right, it should increase one’s confidence. That has been true for me since my big crash, which is why I’ve been able to have more success with less risk.
Becoming truly open-minded takes time. Like all real learning, doing this is largely a matter of habit; once you do it so many times it is almost instinctive, you’ll find it intolerable to be any other way. As noted earlier, this typically takes about eighteen months, which in the course of a lifetime is nothing.
ARE YOU UP FOR THE CHALLENGE?
For me, there is really only one big choice to make in life: Are you willing to fight to find out what’s true? Do you deeply believe that finding out what is true is essential to your well-being? Do you have a genuine need to find out if you or others are doing something wrong that is standing in the way of achieving your goals? If your anwser to any of these quesitons is no, accept that you will never live up to your potential. If, on the other hand, you are up for the challenge of becoming radically open-minded, the first step in doing so is to look at yourself objectively. In the next chapter, Understand That People Are Wired Very Differently, you’ll have a chance to do just that.
* Source: Principles by Ray Dalio