Approach Things with a Beginner's Mind

I was interviewing a participant from a Cultural Leadership programme in West Yorkshire, and we were exploring the way that the programme had changed his mindset. He recalled something a mentor had said to him, and said it had a huge impact on him at the time. What was it?

'Approach things with a beginners mind'

It's one of those phrases that is all at once totally obvious and yet truly profound. How many of us are truly open minded? How many of us are prepared, when confronted with new ideas or ways of doing things, to roll the tapes back to the start - metaphorically at least, in order to try and start afresh?

It's actually extremely hard to do. I remember, as an adult, learning the basics of karate and it was just as much, if not more, about jettisoning bad habits and unhelpful patterns of thinking than it was about learning new stuff.

Real learning involves chucking out preconceptions and defunct scripts. It definitely involves getting out of the comfort zone. It may even mean starting from scratch in some respects. It's jumping and trusting the parachute.

I'm off to plant some potatoes. I've decided not to put them in the ground this year. They're going in a bag. It seems a little odd to me. Will it work? I don't know, but it's got to be worth trying things from a different starting point now and again.

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