Opening up new opportunities with a beginner’s mindset

Go back 09 January 2023

As the new year starts, many of us will have come up with some resolutions and good intentions to see them through. 

However, as we know, we can’t expect different results if we keep doing the same things that didn’t bring those results in the past. 

Often being unaware of this, we let our beliefs about a situation prevent us from seeing things as they really are. 

We judge a person, object or situation based on our past experiences, and, to make our life easier, we categorise them and label them as “good” or “bad” in our mind. 

In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, co-founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, identifies the beginner’s mind as one of the fundamental attitudes of mindfulness.

Keeping a beginner’s mind means being willing to see things as if for the first time. We consciously make a choice to look at something as though we didn’t know anything about it, with the innocent eyes of children, with the curiosity to see what else is there to learn and explore and the stupor to discover everything new, as if for the first time. Think of a child seeing the fireworks for the first time and you for the hundredth: a completely different experience. 

A beginner’s mind allows us to be receptive to new possibilities and prevents us from getting stuck in our mind, which often thinks it knows more than it actually does. 

Developing a beginner’s mind opens up new opportunities in life that you may be missing out on because you are viewing everything through the lens shaped by past experience, that is limiting our options.

But how do we develop a beginner’s mind? The key is being present and observing ourselves and our surroundings, moment by moment. Here are three simple exercises you can incorporate into your day:

  1. Next time you are walking or driving on a route very well known to you (eg. from home to work) see if you can notice things you have overlooked before.  How many trees can be seen on the way? How many houses/shops? What state are they in? What kind of people can you see and what are they doing? Can you guess their emotions? 
  2. If you encounter a new activity you have to do, for instance at work, notice if you are open to trying it out or if you have already decided before doing it that you don’t like it. 
  3. Next time you see someone familiar, see if you can see that person with fresh eyes, as if for the first time, or notice if you are seeing them through the lens of your beliefs about them. 

On January 1st, 1916, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci published an article titled “I Hate New Year’s Day”, which read: 
“Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s day.
That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. 
…That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. “

Let every day be a new beginning by adopting a beginner’s mind.

 

About the author

Angela Meringolo is the Marketing Manager for the ACT Learning. She is also an accredited mindfulness teacher qualified with Mindfulness Now, a programme that combines elements of  Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). 

 

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