Mental flexibility, Knowing You Don’t Know, and Becoming Water.
I’ve had a chance to meet many people I admire through the course of my life so far. They are leaders, pioneers, change agents, culture-setters, knowledge makers, scientists, artists and thinkers. The one thing I have found to be in common in my conversations with each of them is they ask a lot of questions. Not the kind of questions that come from being nosey or trying to show off how smart they are or inadequate you are, but the kind of questions that come from true curiosity and a desire to learn.
I have also always held quite a bit of reverence for the elderly. I am fascinated by their perspectives because of the vast amounts of experience they have had in their lives. I love their stories. However, even when we were young in our marriage, my husband and I started to notice two different paths maturing people took; there were those who got more set in their ways, became creatures of habit, always did, ate, and said the same things, whose lives became smaller and more constricted, versus those who sought out new experiences, learned new skills, bubbled with joy about new books they read, food they tried or people they met, seemed expansive and alive, and… asked a lot of questions. We used to, and still do, talk about this distinction in terms of people who seem to calcify versus those who tend to become more expansive throughout their lifetimes. We swore we would be the latter as we grew older.
25 years later, I can see why it is easier to calcify.
We spend all this time when we are younger trying to figure out a complex world, and that journey often takes a ton of work and produces a lot of failure, heartbreak, anxiety, and pain. As we get older (or for some while they are still young), we just want the comfort of “knowing”. Not knowing creates a sense of uncertainty, and uncertainty is, in varying degrees, not well tolerated by human beings. “Knowing” is simpler, feels safer and is more comfortable, so we like to stick with things we know. This can lead to fairly “fixed” or even dogmatic thinking.
“People have varying levels of comfort when dealing with uncertainty. Too much ambiguity leaves people feeling uncomfortable and even distressed. Dogmatism is sometimes an attempt to keep things simpler and easier to understand. By rejecting alternative ideas that might challenge the status quo, people are able to minimize uncertainty and risk —or at least their perception of risk.” Kendra Cherry (2021)
Additionally, humans tend to be cognitively lazy; we don’t want to have to think hard all the time, and given how fast life moves, we often don’t even have time to really think. So instead, we rely on mental shortcuts: assumptions, instincts and habits that developed out of our early experiences, to make decisions and interpret our life. These automatic processes are like grooves we create to respond to the demands of the world without having to think too much. They save effort and time creating efficiency, but they also create fixed responses.
It seems that one of the greatest obstacles we have to adapting and growing our knowledge, however, is knowledge itself; or rather a belief we already know. According to research on the Dunning Kruger Effect, those who can’t, don’t know they can’t. Basically, those who know the least, often over-estimate their competence and performance. Sometimes having very basic knowledge in an area can give people the false sense that the factors and variables involved in that specific area of knowledge are fairly simple. This simplistic understanding makes them believe they know all they need to know and creates a blindness to the complexity involved as well as the layers upon layers of knowledge they do not have access to. I have always thought, “the moment we think we know is the moment we stop learning.” Dunning Kruger shows this to be true.
Our discomfort with the unknown, reliance on automatic processes, and a belief we already know seem to get in the way of open-mindedness and becoming more expansive as we grow. They are the triad of calcification.
Cognitive Processes; How Our Brains Work and Why We May Move Towards Calcification.
From birth, we are innately wired to make sense of the word by creating categories of knowledge called schemas. A schema is a cognitive framework that helps us organize and interpret information. They create shortcuts for interpreting the vast amounts of data that come at us from our environment. We have schemas for objects (e.g., features of a ball and how to use it), people (Joe is a tall musician who enjoys working with children), ourselves, events (what to expect at certain kinds of events, expectations for behavior, dress, process), and social schemas.
When new information presents itself, we tend to try to fit (assimilate) it into one of our existing schemas, which basically means our tendency as humans is to fit new information into what we already know and understand about the world. Sometimes when new information doesn’t fit, we ignore it and focus instead only on things that fit and therefore confirm what we already know and believe. This is part of the process responsible for what is called confirmation bias. I believe it also plays a part in the Dunning-Kruger effect whereby we ignore the complexity of things. Ignore what doesn’t fit. Keep it simple. Simple is just easier.
To grow, adapt, and change we need to have the flexibility to stay open to a second way of processing new information, accommodation. This is when we change our schemas or add new schemas to fit in the new information. According to Sherry (2021), Accommodation requires rethinking our understanding of the world, what we think we knew, even changing how we think. It can require admitting we were wrong, and even rethinking our memories and past experiences in light of the new information. It can be a “difficult, confusing, and even painful process,” one I suspect, gets harder as we get older because our schemas would have been more entrenched, and rethinking can mean digging deep into past experiences and past mistakes. Staying open-minded in this way requires a lot of mental effort. So sometimes we’d rather just know what we already know.
Maybe if life were a static unchanging organism, we would never have to change nor ever have to “Think Again,” which is the title of Adam Grant’s latest book on “The power of knowing what you don’t know.” Life and the world, however, are constantly shifting. Relying on old knowledge, assumptions, habits, instincts and beliefs will always lead us to the same place, and while that place may have been adaptive at one time, as life transforms it may no longer be adaptive. Alternatively, open-mindedness, or mental flexibility, allows us to flow within an ever-changing journey. It allows us alternative options and lets us grow. It also opens us up to a world of new joys.
So, How Can We Create More Mental Flexibility?
Step One: Intellectual Humility.
I think the greatest antidote to calcification is maintaining a learner’s mind; Approaching life with intellectual humility and assuming we don’t know. As well, the most essential tool for learning is curiosity; And this is where asking questions comes in, remember those thought leaders and expansive elderly people I talked about?
According to Adam Grant, the approach that will help us avoid the trap of believing we already know is to think like a scientist.
“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom. Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over certainty, curiosity over closure.” Adam Grant.
The scientific approach requires a unique mindset in which researchers doubt what they know and are curious about what they don’t know. They are willing to be wrong, and rethink theories and ideas based on new pieces of evidence that come in. Scientists are willing to shift their theories and pivot when they meet evidence that no longer fits. They are good at the process of accommodation.
According to Grant, scientists are willing to pivot because they do not have their identity tied to a specific belief, idea, ideology, decision or opinion, but instead they identify with a value; core principals in life – like freedom, fairness – and if an older belief or decision is later found to conflict with a value, they are willing to change it.
Step 2: Avoid Black and White Thinking
Another key to maintaining a scientific mind is avoiding black and white thinking (i.e., binary bias). Binary arguments are easier for us to understand, there is comfort in the simplicity of black versus white, but most of life is more nuanced than that, and if we ever really want to understand something we will need to invite more complexity in our thinking. According to Grant this can come in the form of contingencies and caveats to our main ideas and beliefs.
Considering deeper complexity often allows us to find common ground with others in at least some areas, or it can help us connect with some alternate ideas enough to open up our perspective. In a more nuanced world we have a better chance of agreeing on some things.
Another option is to accumulate new experiences with new people. The more varied experiences we open ourselves up to, the richer and more complex our understanding of the world will be. Also, it helps to get rid of the words ALWAYS or NEVER; they are some of the most destructive words to our understanding of things but also to our relationships with other people. Things are hardly ever always or never. Bottom line, add the gray – and gray may be a bridge to building deeper understanding and connection!
Step 3: Evaluate Our Own Bias: Ask Ourselves Some Key Questions.
Most important if you want to expand your mind, however, is to go on a hunt for contradictory evidence to our own beliefs; we need to fight that confirmation bias that we all tend towards. Contemplating even one reason why we could be wrong can help us open up our minds towards other possibilities (Adam Grant, Think Again). Questions are the key to unlocking understanding, but we should start with ourselves. Cherry offers a set of questions we can ask ourselves when we encounter new information and are trying to decide how it fits with what we already know:
How much do we really know about the topic?
How trustworthy is the source?
Have we considered other ideas?
Do we have any biases that might be influencing our thinking?
Step 4: Expand Your Mind Through Curiosity & Questions.
Asking other people questions, is an incredibly powerful tool we each have access to and can use in our effort to eliminate our own biases and develop a broader perspective. Here we need to ask questions with an open mind really oriented toward understanding, not focused on rebutting what the other person will say. It is important here to start with an attitude of intellectual humility and curiosity. Like those thought leaders and elderly, when it comes to human interactions, engaging in a conversation with someone who is truly curious and humble is one of the most rewarding experiences you will ever have. So, ask people questions, preferably open-ended ones.
Then listen. One helpful technique is reflective listening. Neil Katz & Kevin McNulty (1994) explain, “Reflective listening is a special type of listening that involves paying respectful attention to the content and feeling expressed in another persons’ communication. Reflective listening is hearing and understanding, and then letting the other know that he or she is being heard and understood” by reflecting back to them what you heard and understood. It requires keeping your own opinion out of the interchange until the other person confirms you have fully understood them.
Talk to people with opposing ideas to understand where they are coming from, what their value is behind their decision? Even though our beliefs and opinions may be in opposition, when we get to the level of values and are able to focus the discussion on those, we can sometimes find common ground with another. Really listening requires active engagement to understand the other person’s experience. It is not always easy and can take time to master, but in the end, it can be a powerful bridge builder and even help us both gain insight and learn new things.
Finally, if we want to engage someone else in rethinking their own thoughts, the best approach is to ask “How” questions rather than “Why” questions. “How did you form this opinion?” “What evidence would change your mind?” Asking these questions can help another person explore their own decisions and opinions at a deeper more nuanced level and can maybe help them open up to alternate possibilities.
In the end, the goal is not necessarily to all agree, but to broaden our understanding, reduce our bias, and open our minds enough to create deeper connections and receptivity to all of life. The goal is to bubble with excitement as we expand and grow.
Be Water, My Friend: Teachings of Bruce Lee
I thought a little wisdom from Bruce Lee would be nice here. Bruce Lee famously said:
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
In her book about her father, Shannon Lee explains what Bruce Lee meant. The nature of the universe is movement - change. It is like a stream that is always moving, flowing, and shifting. When we are rigid and try to stop nature to keep it at one place, we are resisting nature. We are fighting what’s natural and blocking the flow of universal energy. Most of us are at odds with change. But when we can go with nature, when we change and flow with nature, we can use its energy to our advantage, to feed us, and guide us. We remove resistance, and we are free. Be water my friend.
References
Cherry, Kendra (2021) The Benefits of Being Open-Minded. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/be-more-open-minded-4690673
Grant, Adam. (2021). Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Viking, New York, New York.
Katz, Neil & McNulty, Kevin (1994). Reflective Listening. https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/uploadedfiles/parcc/cmc/reflective%20listening%20nk.pdf
Lee, Shannon (2020). Be Water My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee. Flatiron Books.