Come into a conference, hear about a topic that you’re completely familiar with and think “Ahh, this is a waste of time, they’re not telling me anything new”. Have you ever been in this situation? Well, that was (and still is) me quite often. Over the years though, I’ve learned how to silence the thought, the feeling that I know what the person is going to say. Even better, I’ve started approaching conversations with the idea that I don’t know anything at all, that I’m a beginner.
Beginner’s mind is all about trying to understand everything from the basics. It’s coming into a conversation, a conference or into any information exchange with the preconception that you know nothing. You’re eager to learn. You’re much more interested in what the other person has to say, rather than listening to your own narrative in your head. Let me try to show this with two examples when I speak to a marketing specialist Bob.
Conversation #1 Bob: SEO is about reaching people who are searching for items like yours. Me: Great, I’ve heard that page load speed does wonders to your score, right? Bob: Yeah, I’ve heard it has quite a good effect. If you want, you can improve it with…
Conversation #2 Bob: SEO is about reaching people who are searching for items like yours. Me: Great, and how does it work? Bob: Well, Google crawls the website with these
Me: Ok, but how do they know which website is the most relevant? Bob: There are a lot of factors that come into it, be it page speed load, the keyword you have
Me: How come? Bob: Well over the years Google’s algorithm got increasingly complex and it’s changing all the time so that people wouldn’t abuse it and …
These two examples show just a glimpse of what Beginner mindset is all about. The first conversation is about me trying to show that I know something. I have a narrative in my mind and I’m trying to steer the conversation to where I’m familiar. I’m not intrigued in learning anything new really. I assume I know it all. With this kind of closed questions, I don’t really develop the conversation.
Conversely, in the second example, I start with open questions right away. I don’t have a preconception about what to do. I’m eager to learn how does it work, what’s important here. With these kinds of questions, I could’ve carried on the conversation forever and learned a lot. Notice how I’m actively listening, but probing deeper… The answers I get are also much broader, which give me a better understanding of the context.
Having a beginner’s mindset is all about the willingness to learn every day. It’s about having an open worldview, approaching the concepts as if you don’t know anything about them. Traveling is also a way to “reboot”. It makes you realise that you don’t really know much at all.
One of the quickest ways to learn about new concepts is to be perceptive to new perspectives. If you think that you know everything, you’re unlikely to learn anything new. As Mark Twain has