Seeing Past Your Beliefs

There’s a great, on-the-money article by Marcia Conner at Fast Company. It’s about benefits that can emerge if you are able to see past your beliefs. These beliefs include:
• Seeing past the categories you’ve created to organize your life
• Seeing past jargon that might feel unfamiliar
• Seeing past assumptions you’ve created
• Seeing past concepts that may seem isolated because you lack part of the contextual framework to understand them
• Seeing past your own point of view and comprehending how others view the situation
• Seeing past your standard defenses
• Seeing beyond your usual circle for opinions, thoughts and ideas

Connor states:

“Sometimes you can’t “see” new information [or ideas] because you are bound by filters and lack the mental framework to make sense of what your eyes take in. People often see what they want to see and ignore information that doesn’t fit their preconceptions. We default to the shortcut of seeing things the same way. People seek stability and security so seeing things in a way that confirms their beliefs gives them both.”

Our company is in the business of presenting new strategies, ideas, concepts, viewpoints, technologies and methodologies. Sometimes our ideas fail to materialize because there was poor up-front collaboration or information; the concepts are off the mark; there is insufficient budget and/or time to implement them; or the ideas simply aren’t good enough. However, there are also many times when good ideas get rejected or stall because, somewhere along the line, the idea(s) couldn’t make it past a set of beliefs.

Most new ideas have to run a gauntlet to acceptance. The longer that gauntlet, the more chance an idea will have to be compromised to fit someone’s or some group’s beliefs. That compromising process can take an idea from novel to mundane. On the other hand, when people can see past their beliefs (or someone can help protect and nurture an idea through this stage), the gauntlet can instead become part of a transformative production line that improves, augments, and enhances a new idea towards acceptance and successful implementation.