A day doesn’t pass that I don’t want to ask someone “Have you thought about that?” And someone includes me. It’s too damn easy to fall into the swamp of because I think this, it’s right. The trick is to be subversive with my own ideas. To be a wise guy with myself. Subvert—turn upside down. It’s a habit that encourages listening and thinking and prevents spouting off.
The noisy among us gain attention, whether they deserve it or not. Loud = strong = right is dangerous but it too often works. For drunks in bars, pundits on the Internet, and the Hitlerians throughout history. Ideas are like melodies, and noise drowns them out. We're more likely to entertain new ideas, listen for new melodies, when we subvert the noise of our preconceptions and deflect others’.
Rather than pushing back, we might try, “That’s an interesting perspective.” A kinder way of indicating that what someone just said is hogwash.
The payoff for this willingness to subvert preconceptions is curiosity, a flow of comfortable uncertainty. After all, what I know is useful. And what I don’t know is more useful. My ideas aren’t right, they’re simply my ideas. Like snowflakes and dogs, they’re all interesting and different. When we defend a preconception, we're guarding against what’s new. Invulnerability shields us from possibility.
As soon as I allow myself to be subservient to an idea, to a dogma or to my own attitudes, I stop paying attention. Some of us see leadership, including teaching, as being subservient to an agenda, a credo, a particular tune (e.g. Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, STEM, and other trademarked sheet music). Our ideas gain apparent confirmation as we follow the herd, shoulder-to-shoulder like bison.
Try trading in certainty for possibility. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The “discomfort of thought” is only discomforting if we’re not used to it. When we subvert ourselves, we get to reexamine and grow, to listen for new melodies, and to stop generating noise for its own sake.
