Free yourself of opinions

The biggest thing holding you back is yourself.

Prejudice happens by quickly deciding what you think, without questioning your thoughts.

We intuitively conclude that we understand everything we need to know about a subject, thing, or person to decide it is bad, and then shut off new information sources.

This is a perfect example of a fixed mindset.

Why is prejudice so hard to notice?

We think that our opinions are part of our inherent tastes, interests, and moral values. It feels like they are part of our genetics.

The opposite is true.

Our tastes, interests, and moral values are constructed due to our opinions.

These are often opinions that aren’t even our own.

Opinions are given to us by society and our ego, they help guide us to satisfy an underlying need to be appreciated and accepted by a community we value.

The music and fashions that appeal to you are not something you were born to like, but a product of how you grew up. The things you like come with an expectation of things you will dislike.

Judging what you think of something without being open to new information, stifles the ability to ever see truth.

The problem is that we think we already see the truth.
Our knowledge that works today feels as reliable as the fact gravity today will be as strong tomorrow.

How it’s done

37,000 Americans died in car accidents in 1955. This is 6x more than today (adjusted for miles driven).

That year Ford offered seatbelts as an upgrade in all car models for $27 (~$200 in today’s value).
Seatbelts had been proven to increase survival by 70% but despite this, only 2% of buyers upgraded to seatbelts.

98% of buyers chose to risk their own life.
They also chose to risk the lives of their children and loved ones.

By the early 1980’s only 15% of cars had seatbelts.
In December 1984, New York became the first state to require seatbelts to be worn.
It took until the early 2000s for more than 80% of cars on the road to have seatbelts
(New Hampshire is now the only state without a law requiring seatbelts to be worn.)

Social norms prevent change.

“The strongest urge in the world is to keep doing things as you’ve always done”.
- Morgan Housel

Incredibly, the urge to do things as you’ve always done is even stronger than the urge to survive.

People hate being told that they have been doing things wrong all along.

We have no idea what life could be like

A major barrier to change is the fact we lack awareness of what change could be like. There is nothing in our working knowledge to represent the potential new feeling.

As humans, we perceive the risks and problems of change more than these ambiguous unknown benefits.

Health

You can’t understand whether you like exercise or not without first being healthy enough to do it.

If running for 15 minutes creates the feeling you are going to die, you don’t know how good it might feel to be fit.

Explaining what it is like to run for 1 hour full of energy whilst driven by delightful runners high, good music, and stunning views, is like trying to explain the color red to a blind person.

Yet it is so easy to imagine the problems like blisters, expensive trainers, stitches, painful legs, and losing time whilst looking red, sweaty, and pathetic.

Someone can not say all sports ‘aren’t for them’ without trying all sports, because baseball is different from ballet, and jiu-jitsu is different from juggling.

It isn’t easy to become fit and it isn’t easy to try the thousands of potential sports available.

Without trying it, every idea you have about exercise is just unquestioned prejudice.

Communication

As babies, we learn to cry to get attention as we have no words to describe our emotions. As children, we still cry to get attention but we learn to get angry when things don’t go our way.

As adults, we think we have grown up because we stop crying for attention.

Yet if you deal with your problems by getting angry, you haven’t learned to explain your feelings or the current injustice.

You’re still letting your emotions control you to get attention and use your tantrums to exert power.

You have not improved your ability to argue and attract respect.

Drawing people to willingly listen to you and agree with you in your moments of stress is a wonderful and sustainable form of power.

You have no working knowledge of what that is like.

If you think your ability to act out of anger is of moral importance, it is natural to resist the idea of ‘not being angry’.
Yet that is a prejudiced opinion that you haven’t questioned.

It is intuitive to do as you’ve always done and deny the idea you are the one who has always been wrong.

Change is not easy or obvious. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, keep getting the same results.

Living

Many Americans have never left their country yet believe it is ‘the best country in the world’.

How can they ever know?

As a non-American myself, it is easy for me to notice some flaws; massive inequality, expensive education, more expensive healthcare, awful public transport, and raging gun violence. A nation so politically divided that almost half the people you meet will hate you based on your interests.

Yet in many metrics, it is undeniably the best country in the world. It has the biggest entertainment and tech industries, the largest economy, and every form of nature you could imagine. This perhaps makes the idea of being the ‘best country in general’ so much more believable without questioning it.

You need to leave your country to understand how good or bad it is. There is no perspective from within.

I certainly don’t believe England is the best country in the world. In fact, I used to hate it and could only list its problems. I’ve now lived in six countries and see both the appeal and the problems of England.

It is dangerous to quickly make strong conclusions about our life decisions in general.

Where to live, what is a good career, or how much money you need. We need some perspective first.

Imagine…

If you had to marry the first partner you fancied without getting a chance to learn about what to expect from a partner through experience. Many people would be stuck in toxic relationships.

Yet we don’t realize how ‘toxic’ our current situation is due to relying on the initial opinions we formed about our lifestyle; health, career, hometown, hobbies, and even the ways we experience emotions.

Tasty opinions

Perhaps one of the most important drivers of success is good taste.

Who you spend time with, and what you spend time doing are driven by taste.

If you have good taste you make good decisions in life.

Yet most people don’t work in improving their taste for two reasons:

• Ego - Everyone thinks they have ‘good taste’.

• Fixed mindset - Taste is something you are ‘born with’.

Ego

We don’t question our tastes because we think they are ‘the best’, despite not finding experiences to grade them on.

The idea that we are currently deluded does not sit comfortably with our ego. We need to believe that we are the wise master of our life who made sensible decisions for sensible reasons.
(see last week’s installment on why your explanations are false - The source of all your bullsh*t)

Fixed Mindset

We think our taste is mostly fixed whilst our opinions are easily changeable.

Yet we fail to change opinions on our taste because we think we can’t change our taste.

Actually, our taste is more flexible than we realize but our opinions are the things we must work on.

Rick Rubin is one of the most successful music producers of all time, working with artists such as Eminem, Lady Gaga, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Strokes, Adele, and Johnny Cash to name a tiny selection few.

He doesn’t claim to have any special abilities with music or technology and says his main talent in life is respecting his taste.

"I never decide if an idea is good or bad until I try it. So much of what gets in the way of things being good is thinking that we know.
And the more that we can remove any baggage we're carrying with us, and just be in the moment, use our ears, and pay attention to what's happening, and just listen to the inner voice that directs us, the better."

~ Rick Rubin

Talent vs Skill

The growth mindset reminds us that our inherent talent does not represent our potential skills.

Initial talent is a determination of how much skill you could have and how quickly.

Ultimately how much skill you actually have is related to the work you do.

Michael Jordan was dropped from his youth basketball team because his “talent” wasn’t good enough.

He became the most skilled player in the world and one of the best athletes that has ever lived, due to his hard work.

He was celebrated for his incredible gift and his talent.

In pursuit of good taste

If we fall into fixed mindset beliefs we keep our fixed opinions and fixed tastes.

Just like our skills can be improved through hard work, we can improve our opinions through the act of novel experiences.

“To vary your inspiration, consider varying your inputs. Turn the sound off to watch a film, listen to the same song on repeat, read only the first word of each sentence in a short story, arrange stones by size or color, learn to lucid dream. Break habits. Look for differences. Notice connections.”

― Rick Rubin,

As life is so short, it makes sense to understand as much as possible so we can make informed conclusions on how to live.

If we stop thinking we know everything, we can then start to build at least a little awareness of the reality of the world.