We all have ideas about:
- What things mean
- Why things are the way they are
- Why people make the choices they do
- How things are going to develop from this point forward
Collectively, all these ideas make up our mental model of the world: a blueprint that we’re convinced explains how everything fits together.
This isn’t a bug. It’s feature – how our minds are designed to work.
Navigating through life without the ability to make at least some sense of our circumstances would render us powerless. We’d expend all our energy trying to figure “why” & “what next” rather than simply accepting things and moving forward.
To prevent us from getting stuck in infinite statis, our brains take shortcuts.
Where no explanation can be found, we make one up.
Where gaps exist, we fill them in.
Where better, more comprehensive answers could be found, we ignore them.
Why waste time trying to understand when we’ve already reached our own conclusions?
As a cognitive reality, this is neutral: neither good nor bad. It’s simply how it is.
The danger, however, isn’t simply that we’ll take a shortcut and end up with the wrong picture…
It’s that we’ll fail to update that picture when things change.
Some impressions linger.
Whether we anchor our viewpoint to our initial analysis, place too much emphasis on specific factors (while disregarding others), or let someone else make the call for us, we’re all prone to seeing things subjectively.
That’s true of the initial judgments we make. And it’s true of the ones we hold on to, long after circumstances might demand we think things through once again.
This is a problem. The longer we hold onto ideas that don’t serve us, the greater the risk we’ll go off-track… led astray by a perspective that just isn’t so.
The solution?
Sometimes, the only way to realise how much something has changed is to walk away, clear your head, and come back with a fresh perspective.
Time, distance, alternative perspectives, guidance from people we trust – all of these things can help.
But the biggest assets for managing our impressions properly (so we don’t end up clinging to old ideas that no longer serve us) are flexibility and humility.
Be willing to be wrong.
Be willing to change your mind.
Realise that better ways of seeing things might exist. That these alternative perspectives are yours for the taking – if you’re open to them.
In doing so, you’ll gain the ability to see the world more clearly than before…
Not just as you think it to be, or as it used to be.