I really wish that I could open up my mind a little bit more because I feel bad and sometimes even stupid because I can't understand where people get their ideas or opinions from.
As you can imagine, this tends to cause problems. Being closed-minded this year and in general has made it a lot harder to learn and understand people's opinions. I think that if I learn to be less closed-minded, that I can get a lot more out of this year.
I'm wondering if being closed minded is the same as being pessimistic? I don't see myself as a pessimistic person, but could that be the base of my problems? If I learned to see the glass as half full instead of half empty, maybe seeing other perspectives would come easier as well. I think that my life in general would improve if I started to become more optimistic, and out of all of my classes.
I haven't noticed my closed mindedness before, so I'm wondering if it's something that I've started to "have" recently. If so, I really wonder what caused me to not accept other ideas. Like I said, I've always seen myself as a fairly optimistic person, so I'm really wondering what brought this on.
In order to try and stray away from this, I'm going to try and look at everyone's opinions evenly, no mater how much it pains me. ;) I really want to look at everything with open eyes and be able to view the world like everyone else does. It bothers me when I can't see where people get their ideas, so if I try and open up my thinking a little bit more, I think that my life will be a lot happier and easier.
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Jordan, you address a challenge that I think a lot of us face. I don't think close-minded necessarily means being pessimistic, so don't fret! But I do agree that being open-minded perspectives usually lead to happiness. Being able to see a subject in it's entirety places less emphasis on the negatives, and leads to less aggravation. We can't know everything about our world, no matter how much we all admit to ourselves that we know best. When it comes to learning, lets be honest: it's hard to buckle down and admit that what we're learning will actually be beneficial to our intellectual experience. It comes down to our guiding question: "To what degree do I understand that which I'm about to reject?" As we face an intellectual challenge, it's easier to shut down. But if we focus on opening our minds we can see far beyond the challenge. Great post!
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