The Limits of Your Growth

Your growth is limited by your ability to listen to ideas with which you disagree, explore beliefs that are in conflict with your own, and your ability to take the perspective of another, understanding that they hold some piece of the truth.

You arrived where you are today because you have been exposed to a certain set of ideas about who you are, what you are supposed to be doing, and what is possible for you. You are also here because you refused a certain set of ideas, some of which would surely have harmed you, and others that would just as surely benefited you—had you not dismissed those ideas because you disagreed with them. Maybe the person who shared the idea wasn’t the right person to deliver the idea to you. Or maybe you just dismissed it because you disagreed without exploring any further.

Other people believe things that you don’t believe. Their beliefs allow them to produce certain results in certain areas, and your beliefs do the same for you. To a certain point. But refusing to consider beliefs that conflict with your existing beliefs causes stagnation, arrested development. If you are not open to exploring new beliefs, then you cut your self off from different ideas—and different results. The more you find someone else’s beliefs threatening, the more you should explore that set of beliefs. This is not to suggest that you should adopt other people’s beliefs as your own without serious consideration, but it is a reminder that if you have not changed your beliefs in many years, you are not growing.

Your growth is limited to your ability to take another person’s perspective, to understand why they think what they think, why they believe what they believe, and why they act the way that they act—without judgment. When you can hold another person’s perspective, without judging them, and working to understand the piece of the truth they hold, you are growing.

What you know and believe now got you to this point. What you are willing to change will get you further. Your growth is limited only by your willingness to explore something new, even when you believe it is something with which you disagree.