How do I keep a beginner's mindset?
One of the best things we can do to drive progress and innovation is continue to operate from a beginner's mindset.
Yes, there's times when expertise and experience and deep wisdom have a role to play, but the ability to approach thing's from a beginner's mindset it a game changer.
Two things recently have really helped me engage in life from this pure perspective: yoga and spending time with kids.
I've been taking multiple yoga classes a week for almost 3 years now, and yet I still feel like a complete noob every time I hit the mat. Perhaps an outsider might be confused as to how, after hundreds of yoga class with some amazing teachers, I can still be humbled and feel like I know nothing. It's part of a discovery process where poses and positions only truly reveal themselves after so much practice and iteration.
A similar thing happens when I spend time with my niece and nephew and friends' kids expect its more of a re-discovery. As long as I can remember, kids have always loved me, and I think I can finally articulate why. I think it comes from the deep empathy that allows me to try to understand the world from their perspective and see the world through their eyes. I ask kids so many questions to help me remember what the universe looked liked when I was young.
I went for a long walk in the woods with my niece and nephew this past weekend by my parents house where I grew up. I've spent hundreds of hours in those woods as a kid and yet this weekend, we discovered things I've never seen before. It was quite an adventure. For all of us.
When it comes to innovation, the best new ideas and breakthroughs are almost never coming from the people who think they know it all and have nothing left to learn. It's coming from the folks who, no matter how much they know, are still able to start with a blank sheet of paper and an unlimited repertoire of what's possible.
This ties back into my favorite question of "What if?" A beginner is always asking what if. What if I could do that arm balance or connect that binding on the yoga mat? What if I didn't assume I knew all of the secrets treasures of the woods I grew up in? What if we didn't do things the way they've always been done?
When it comes to truly innovative and game-changing products and solutions, the ever-curious mindset of the beginner is far superior to those who believe they already know all of the answers.