Well, since I have been down with the usual Bakersfield malaise of no sunlight for days, I decided to look inward for an end of the year review of what lessons I have learned this year. Pretty simple really, just asked myself “am I more evolved than last year?”
2022 was a distinctively transformative year of my life, so
I wanted to express some of these lessons and share them with all of you in a
few blog posts scattered throughout the last days of 2021… Maybe something will
resonate with you for a year-end epiphany to help guide you to undertake a
similar exercise.
Let’s make these short and sweet. A life lesson bogged down
in a long explanation sometimes gets lost in translation…
Realization: I have learned to enjoy being wrong…
Always value finding the truth over being right. This is for every aspect of your life. Politics, religion, personal philosophy, etc. Imagine yourself as a scientist just doing experiment after experiment and learning something new each time you perform the experiment. Think about how it isn’t possible for you to know everything, and everyone has a different way of thinking about things and we all could teach one another something.
For some odd reason, the only information we want to obtain
and believe already fits our personal world view. We reject any and all ideas
that threaten that world view instead of considering the very real possibility
that we might be wrong. When all of our beliefs are built like a game of Kevin
Bacon and the Six Degrees of Separation, then all new information leads to
validating your original belief. When you think about that for just a second
you can see the utter absurdity of your egocentrism.
So admit it, you’re quite fallible and you cannot possibly
be right about everything floating around in your head. In fact, take a second
to consider how Zen it would be to say “I don’t know…” when asked a question. How
about listening to a volatile viewpoint instead of formulating an argument
before the other person is done talking and now the pressure to defend is gone
and your mind is open for a new way of thinking.
Retrain your mind to embrace new information that forces a
change in viewpoint. Think of it as a software update. Still might be a little
buggy, might even not work at all but you can always adjust or just roll back
the update to the old ideas. No harm, no foul and think about this…
By listening without prejudice, you’re learning…
