Making Good by Billy Parish

Author:Billy Parish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)

OPEN-MINDEDNESS

If you want to be open to adapting, you can’t presume to have all the answers. As soon as you presume to know something, you stop listening to learn and start listening to prove yourself right. The truth is always repositioning itself no matter how “right” we are at any given point; a million metrics are shifting, changing the picture.

Many people experience being truly open-minded for the first time while traveling. By stripping away the familiarity of our routine and our home, we begin to look at seemingly everyday things with a curious eye. We ask questions that we would never ask about our own cities and entertain thoughts that alter our direction. We are inquisitive, sometimes even happy, to get lost, come into new ideas often, and eventually settle into a sense of calm as we navigate our changing environments. Traveling inspires the kind of spontaneity and heightened awareness that we need to replicate in our careers.

We can also begin to gain a sense of openness by refreshing our orientation toward our routines. Haruki Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, writes about the rolling procession of thoughts and mental blankness that can arise in a repetitive act like running—he calls it “acquiring the void.” He quotes novelist W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote, “In every shave there is a philosophy.” No matter how banal the routine, there is an opportunity to be astonished, find insight, discover new questions, and learn something new, one we often don’t find the presence to claim.

Being open to new ideas can also come from the practice of allowing yourself an unexpected yes. Instead of sitting at home, go out. Instead of going to the restaurant you always go to, try going to a lecture that interests you. Search for a fresh perspective, a new set of eyes. Uncover the layers of your routines, remember why they became habits in the first place. It won’t always be a light bulb moment and, in fact, you may find that you rediscover why you have your habits. Start by simply looking and noticing, and feel the shift in your reaction.

There was a three-word message inscribed on a yellow promotional pencil Dev picked up at a conference: It is possible. What a simple concept. Dev took a few pencils and kept them on his desk to produce the same effect as the experience of letting an unexpected yes slip into his daily routine—it reminded him not to shut down ideas that seemed silly or weird or out of sync with his patterns. It is possible that I will actually enjoy hanging out with a new group of people, or that I can learn how to build a Web site using PHP, or that I will actually be able to survive a game of pick-up soccer without embarrassing myself. It is possible.

The key to finding that openness to possibility is cultivating an awareness in three critical scenarios: when we feel ourselves clinging to something mainly

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