At Growth By Design, we believe intentional choices lead to impactful growth, whether you're shaping a thriving organization or a meaningful life. Here, we provide the practical information, tools, and frameworks to get you there. Today's post explores the power of unlearning so that you can learn more, do more, and receive more. 

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I Am a Recovering Know-It-All.

I blame my love of learning that always leaves me with something to share, the education system for constantly propping up PhDs as experts, and my helper heart that always wants to help people solve problems quickly.

I know I am not alone here in my know-it-all condition. We live in a society and economy that prioritizes decisiveness and confidence, which are all too often conflated with quick decisions and wielding of past experience as a short-cut for future success.

The problem with this though is that we live in a rapidly changing world, and so past experience is not always a roadmap for future success. In my work and personal life, I am coming toe-to-toe with this reality every day. AI has unlocked new innovation, capabilities, and opportunities. With my environment changing rapidly, what I know to have worked in the past is likely just a thing of the past.

I want to live a life of continuous growth, and that means I need to become more comfortable setting aside what I think I know in order to explore all that I don’t know.

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“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”
— Shunryu Suzuki

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Rejecting the Expert Ideal

Breakthrough outcomes start by thinking about a problem from a blank slate. You can’t do this if you are constantly leaning into expertise that has created an index of what you “know”.

Shoshin (roughly translated to “beginner’s mind”) is a tenet of Zen Buddhism philosophy that encourages approaching life with openness. Contrary to the name, a beginner’s mindset is not for newbies – it is a lifelong philosophy that helps you unlock creativity and prevents you from getting stuck in rigid patterns or assumptions that stifle your growth and progress. A beginner’s mindset doesn’t just feel good – it actually retrains your brain for better decision making by strengthening your cognitive flexibility and neuroplasticity so you can adapt and grow with new information.

Children are natural experts in the beginner’s mindset. They approach the world with curiosity; asking “how”, “why”, and “what” allows them to learn rapidly. Yet somewhere along the way we replace our beginner’s mindset with a knower’s mindset. While this make every-day decisions easier, a knower’s mindset harms our ability to make the progress we seek in the long-term.

Tips I’ve Learned for Cultivating a Beginner’s Mind

By setting aside all of my preconceived notions about what is and isn’t, what works and doesn’t, I can take in new information with fresh eyes while leveraging my tactical experience and knowledge from a judgment-free, productive place. Here are the best tips I’ve found to help me on my journey of cultivating a beginner’s mindset:

• Create a Mindfulness Practice: Mindfulness helps me be present, notice my judgments and let go of them. By creating a mindfulness practice, I can catch my judgments as they arise and consciously let them go, interrupting my knower’s brain and allowing for creativity to flourish.
  
  Cultivating a strong mindfulness practice is a prerequisite for implementing the next tips. I find that starting every morning with 5 minutes of reading, 5 minutes of journaling, and 5 minutes of meditating get me into a beginner’s mindset before I enter my day.
  
• Slow Down: I have to deliberately slow down my actions and thoughts and take a pause before jumping into solutioning. This helps me notice details I’d otherwise overlook and prevents autopilot thinking.
  • This is the one I most often struggle with – the achiever in me loves to solve things quickly and move on.
• Question Your Assumptions: Approach each situation as if I know nothing about it, even if I’m experienced. Whenever I find myself thinking “I know what to do,” I try to pause and ask, “What if I’m wrong?” or “What else could be true?”.
• Seek Feedback: I actively invite others to share their perspectives to help me identify my blind spots and stay open to learning instead of sitting in a place of knowing.
• Embrace Learning, Not Outcomes: See mistakes as simply data that is essential feedback for growth, and release the need for something to turn out a certain way.
• Be a Beginner: Sometimes I need to zap my know-it-all brain back into reality. By actually being a beginner and try something completely new, I am able to practice the behaviors that are crucial for learning and blank-slate solutioning that are paramount to a strong beginner’s mindset.

Join Me in Becoming a Not-Know-It-All

So friends, I invite you to join me on my journey of becoming a not-know-it-all. Let’s approach each day, conversation, and opportunity by first letting go of old habits and judgments so that we can embrace new possibilities. Today instead of thinking “I know how this works”, ask “I wonder how this works” and watch the magic start to unfold.

I’d love to hear how you are practicing a beginner’s mindset! Share your tips and tricks for navigating a beginner’s mindset in the thread below.

Onward and upward!
Katie