Being Open-Minded

• Mindsets are unique to everyone.
• Mindsets are created by experiences.
• Mindsets create blind spots. They provide us with fragmented ways of looking at the world.
• Mindsets are self-deceptive.
• Mindsets shape our everyday lives. Changing our lives means shifting our mindsets.
• Mindsets create our shared world. They are a powerful leverage point for cultural and systemic change.
• Mindsets can be transcended, using mindfulness.

• The fixed mindset: Believes strengths are innate gifts that can't be developed.
• The growth mindset: Believes strengths can be developed with effort.
• The benefit mindset: Believes in developing strengths and meaningfully contributes to a future of greater possibility.

It is the capacity to be flexible, to embrace ambiguity, contradiction, and unconventional mindsets.

It is the ability to abandon our 'marriage' to our beliefs and assumptions, opening ourselves to new paradigms.

Elastic thinking is the way to cutting edge innovation, future visions, science fiction gems, and other great new ideas.

Our tendency to explore and learn has always created something new in the world.

Premise 1: I can’t explain or imagine how proposition X can be true.

Premise 2: if a certain proposition is true, then I must be able to explain or imagine how that can be.

Conclusions: proposition X is false.

... and to bring this up as part of an argument. The issue with doing so occurs when this incredulity isn’t justified or supported by concrete information, and when this lack of belief is used in order to assume that a preferred personal explanation must be the right one, despite the lack of proof.

At the same time, it’s also important to remember that it’s possible that the person using the argument from incredulity is right, despite the fact that their reasoning is flawed.

Suspending reality is a powerful storytelling technique as it creates a safe, magical world in which to contend with powerful emotions and themes, and it allows the viewer or listener to be transported and associate that escape from reality with the story.

Anything is possible and that becomes inspiration.

Disney stories have a near universal appeal because they are designed around struggles and desires that are common to humans everywhere.

You can apply this message to storytelling in your company, too. When you’re communicating with your customers, you should focus on the shared experiences and desires that make your product so valuable.

The organic and unpredictable nature of conspiracy theories had led many researchers to investigate the cause of the phenomenon.

• Successful conspiracy theories always tend to invent a great villain, have a backdrop or a backstory, and a morality lesson that can be easily understood by most.
• Great stories are by nature more magnetic and appealing than the truth.
• Human beings think and understand in stories. For thousands of years, fairy tales, legends, anecdotes and mysteries have helped our brains make sense of the world.

Every society has its own, unique anxieties and obsessions, and the conspiracy theories that gain good mileage are the ones that tap into these primal fears.

Example: Many people fear vaccination of the children due to fears that the mass drive to vaccinate such a large population has some ulterior motive, like a mass medical experiment. The dodgy past record of the health care system, and the fact that the vaccination is free of charge, of course, adds fuel to the fire.

The reasons for the popularity of tiny homes are affordability and that they satisfy young people's need for mobility. They can be easily sold or rented.

Whether tiny houses will continue in the future depends on the economy. If the middle class continues to shrink, small homes will likely increase in popularity as people will need affordable housing.

Some of the appealing qualities of living in tiny houses are related to environmental concerns and eco-friendliness. Homeowners of a tiny house feel they are making a positive contribution to the world because it leaves a lighter carbon footprint.

With limited space, it can also be part of living a simpler life with a dramatic downsizing of clothing, housewares, furniture, and other possessions. It is less to clean and maintain and has lower housing payments and utility bills.

Nelson Mandela was lauded as a courageous leader -- even when he was truly terrified. Like the time he astonished his bodyguard by calmly reading a newspaper while the plane he was flying on had engine failure.

Mandela himself, however, later confessed in private that he’d been truly terrified but refused to show it. Mandela knew that courage is a choice, and everyone can be courageous by learning to cope with your anxieties and fears every day. 

Niccolò Machiavelli held that using advisors well begins with knowing one’s own weaknesses and selecting advisors to offset them. It’s also necessary to know how to solicit advice the right way.

For Machiavelli, that meant showing advisors he valued their honest opinion and would not punish them for giving it. But, at the end of the day, he was the one calling the shots.

Philosophers are interested in asking whether an idea is logical–rather than simply assuming it must be right because it is popular and long-established. - Alain de Botton

Philosophers teach us to think about our emotions, rather than simply have them. By understanding and analysing our feelings, we learn to see how emotions impact on our behaviour in unexpected, counterintuitive and sometimes dangerous ways.  - Alain de Botton

The physical world is interacting with our actions, not our internal plans and intentions. 

We cannot shape society, or help people just by having noble intentions, without action.

We treat people in certain ways and then justify the same. You are judged by what you do, and not for the reasons you give.

If our treatment isn't right, no amount of justification will serve any purpose.