We’ve discussed sources of fragility before, but having a closed mind is one of the biggest contributors to more fragility – and less resilience as a result. A brief definition of a closed mind is when we’re unwilling to consider different ideas or opinions. We might all know this definition, but what we might NOT understand is how this state of mind makes us individually more fragile instead of more resilient.
These past few weeks I’ve written about the characteristics of resilient systems and described common practices that decrease our resilience and make our organizations more fragile. This blog is about being closed-minded as humans, and how this often unexamined characteristic makes us individually more fragile.
Interested in viewing our March, 2023 Regenerative Leadership session on Characteristics of Resilient Systems and their Core KPI’s? View the video here.
A resilient system or person can absorb disruption and still maintain function. We continue to face ongoing (and some would say increasing) disruptions from extreme weather, the long tail of COVID-19, and those politicians who seem to wear their closed-mindedness proudly, among other things. These disruptions make it necessary for us to proactively find ways to design and strengthen our resilience personally as well as organizationally.
Of course, being closed-minded has all kinds of repercussions in our personal and professional lives, from the nature of our relationships to our stress levels. But in terms of increased individual fragility, and its inverse relationship to decreased resilience, I’ve seen three main effects of having a closed mind:
- We become more rigid in our thinking and our habits. Our world is evolving, dynamic, and surprising. When we stop exploring and experimenting, we start falling behind the evolution of the living system that is around us. This disconnect makes us individually more prone to missing information that alerts us that it’s time to change and adapt.
- We start creating our own suffering. The Buddhists believe pain is inevitable, and suffering is optional. We create more suffering for ourselves when our personal beliefs and habits don’t match the reality of what is occurring around us. This is how closed mindedness actually creates more suffering in our lives, and makes us more fragile.
- We resist information that disagrees with our current mindset. Nature is designed to evolve and the start of each cycle of evolution is called “forcing feedback”. Feedback from the external environment forces an ecosystem out of the status quo and causes the system to adapt to what is changing. When we hold tightly to our views and become closed minded – even in just a part of our lives, like our political beliefs or our leadership style – we work very hard to ignore this forcing feedback, often subconsciously. The more feedback we ignore, the larger the gap becomes between what we think and what the living system is telling us.
Darwin had a very good way of summing up this dynamic. His research states that in Nature the species who got to pass along their DNA to the next generation were the species who adapted and were the best fit with the changing external environment. We’ve come to understand Darwin’s research to mean the survival of the fittest .But actually, it’s “the survival of the species with the best (adaptive) fit within their environment.”
When we choose not to adapt, we become more vulnerable and – often unknowingly – create conditions that blindside us by the very things that are changing.
But avoiding fragility is not the only reason why its important to hear all feedback and adapt when needed. For me, when I continue to learn – because that’s really what we’re talking about here – life becomes much more interesting and challenging. So, I have learned to hold lightly to my thinking, so my mind is permeable to new ideas and information that are coming at me.When I actively lean into disconfirming information I am enriched. My thinking expands far beyond just my own personal worldview. My soul is nurtured, and I gain a much better understand of what it means to be a good human being.
How does open mindedness benefit you in your own life? I’m eager to hear your thoughts.
KA
