"Be open-minded: To be open-minded is having the courage to listen." - Anonymous. "The greatest discoveries of science are those that came from being open minded." ~ Galileo Galilei. ~ Isaac Newton
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Be open-minded to believe new things. To believe something, you must first be convinced that it is true; then, test and disprove it, if it's true. It is very easy for me to criticize others and myself and say, "This isn't right," "This isn't good," etc. With that said, I also have to know and understand that what I'm doing is helping and saving people - especially children and young people who are really suffering and need our help. To be open-minded means having the courage to listen to others and accept new things.

According to leading researchers on creativity, openness to novel ideas and opinions is one of the biggest factors in being creative. Open-mindness also relates to how we approach others' thoughts and opinions of us, especially those who are trying to influence our thinking or actions. According to James Rotton in his book, Thinking and Being: A Life Journal of Ideas and Creativity, "The extent to which a person can be open and receptive to another's point of view and to their creative genius are related to how much emotional investment he has in the subject matter of that interaction." Similarly, according to a study by University of California - Riverside, "the more emotionally involved a person is with a problem, the harder it is for them to change their mind."

This doesn't mean that we should show less caring to people who suffer from different diseases and illnesses. But it does show that we should be open mind and not close minded, not necessarily showing compassionate feelings towards one another. The ability to be flexible and adaptable plays an important role in being creative. Another factor that plays a crucial role is our ability to focus. If we can't focus on a certain thing or a set of things, then it would be hard for us to be creative.

In a survey done by Michigan State University, it was found out that most entrepreneurs, consultants and businessmen don't have a very good idea of what it takes to be an effective leader. They assume that being a good leader would automatically mean having a lot of power, money and people behind them. But this isn't true. Some of the characteristics of a good leader would be being open minded enough to think about new things, being able to make quick decisions under pressure, and having the courage to suggest new ideas even if they might not be politically correct.

People tend to build their own perception of reality based on the existing beliefs, and this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once a person has formed his/her belief, he/she tends to be closed minded towards new information. Being open minded means that you are taking in new information about a particular issue or topic which may challenge your existing beliefs, and may prompt you to change your existing beliefs or perspective. This is known as cognitive flexibility.

In my previous article "Cognitive Flexibility - Why Being Open-Minded Can Create the Opportunity," I had mentioned a couple of instances where we may have been closed minded, but yet we managed to find solutions for the problems at hand. In that article, I had mentioned the time when I was called away from an important client meeting because of a technical snag in the office network. The problem was so serious that it affected the availability of the entire office network, which seriously disrupted our normal operations for several days. What I learned from that experience is that sometimes we need to step back, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. It is not always going to be pretty, and it might not be exactly what we had hoped for, but it was better than shutting-down or putting-off something that potentially could have impacted the availability of the company's services. After learning more about the potential problems, we could have perhaps tried another approach, a different strategy, or perhaps tried to solve the problem differently...and all of this might have cost us less money and/or time.
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However, let's say that we got lucky this time. Maybe the problem wasn't as critical as we thought it was. And, if we had focused more on our vision and on our mission rather than on the details of the problem, we might have been able to find a workable solution in a short period of time. The bottom line is that we should always be open-minded, even when things don't seem to be going quite as expected. Just because the situation is difficult or troublesome doesn't mean that it can't be resolved-and shouldn't be.