Reshma Rathod is an excellent Physical Therapist whom I have placed a great deal of trust in because she has helped me heal challenging injuries. I trust her judgment.
I slipped up over the holidays, didn’t do my home exercises and Reshma asked me whether I was willing to use a specific technique that would give me a jumpstart to get back to where I was before I started to lose some ground. My immediate answer was no, I was not – and with her great wit and humor, she asked me “but aren’t you teaching others about their mindset?”
Hmmm … My response to Reshma was, well, I don’t use the term mindset, instead we use MindOpen™ to define how our clients learn to achieve a more enhanced state of thinking – I was deflecting and she knew it.
Of course, she then asked whether my mind was open. We both laughed as it was clear that mine was not.
It is easy for us to believe and think we are progressive, positive, and proactive in how and what we think. And it often doesn’t take much for us to figure out that in some areas, we’re more closed and set in our thinking and less open than we thought.
Can you think of ways you may have been caught like I was in this example? How does this show up for you at work or home – maybe both?
And more importantly, how do you learn to be open enough to listen to an idea that might fuel the solution, but one that you or your team had simply not considered?
It’s so easy to say “No” – easy because it’s quick and doesn’t require us to consider what possibilities may lie just beyond our choice to hear an alternative approach or not.
A quick ‘No’ often blocks change and keeps us well within our comfort zone as we reactively shy away from the unknown. We don’t always want the change we say we do because it requires us to reconsider and perhaps be something new and different. Sometimes, we need to ‘unlearn’ the habit of the instant ‘no’…
And, yes, Reshma did come up with a highly effective alternative treatment, and I also used the opportunity to be better attuned to my own thinking and choices!
When you’re faced with a choice and start to feel the “no” form on your lips seemingly before your brain has had the chance to engage, ask yourself whether your mind is set or open and then take a minute to explore the difference!
Practice having an open mind!
