Expand Your Mind: Journey Through Big Ideas & New Perspectives
I Want To Journey & Discover
Wonder Freely
Boundless Curiosity
Ideas Worth the Journey
You don’t settle for surface-level thinking. You love big ideas, new perspectives, and intellectual rabbit holes. This is a space for expanding your mind and rethinking what you thought you knew.
Questions That Expand The Map
Seek More
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Wonder Freely
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Boundless Curiosity
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Seek More • Wonder Freely • Boundless Curiosity •
What If the Answer Wasn’t What You Expected?
The answer not being what you expect can be terribly annoying, especially if the question initially appeared benign and as though there was little effort involved. However, I say this is a good thing. Every time an answer is more than we thought, it is an opportunity to be curious, and curiosity is the fuel of growth. The best insights in our lives are the ones that follow the MAYA Principle – Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. It means that any questions we ask and answers we receive toe the line of what we are willing to accept. It is a balance between innovative thought and the familiar. The more we balance these, the greater our ability to push our boundaries and explore new frontiers in our lives.
Why Do We Get Stuck in the Same Patterns of Thinking?
We get stuck in patterns because we love certainty and closure; they help us feel safe - a maladaptive pattern. This can be quite detrimental because we can end up believing things that are not true, although they feel as if they are.
Getting stuck in these patterns is a self-deception where we tell ourselves a narrative in which we, the character, cannot overcome the obstacles in any other way. It is a self-limitation of choice brought on by a healthy desire to feel like we "know."
Breaking these patterns of thinking comes down to giving ourselves additional options to move around the problem using different thinking tools, rather than our default. Over time, you internalise these tools and can deploy them when you begin to feel stuck—or gain new tools. This learning and curiosity cycle allows you to overcome the obstacles you face.
Breaking free starts with questioning what you think you know, seeking corroboration from many sources with varying viewpoints, and finding the merit in them, regardless of whether you agree.
So if you are feeling stuck, I hope there is something here to help you around your problem.
How Do You Keep an Open Mind Without Losing Yourself?
What an existential question. I have sat in the mire of this question often, mainly with the subsequent questions: where does it end? How will you know if you "know enough"?
Something I have come to learn is that there is more information in front of your eyes on a day-to-day basis than you could ever process. The world makes so much of it accessible—video platforms release more global content daily than you could watch in a lifetime. But I have also learned that it is not about having the information; it is about being and doing.
Wisdom and curiosity are the processes of considering everything you can and discerning the patterns that lie beneath the surface. Once you do this, you can discard some (in some cases, most) of the voluminous, inconsequential information to truly understand the heart of an idea.
Keeping an open mind is a mindset and an attitude of seeking. Therefore, by definition, you cannot lose yourself. Sometimes, you may become overwhelmed with information or lose the trail you were following—but this is not the same as losing yourself or losing meaning, as long as you continue seeking.
What If There’s More to the Story Than You Realise?
The beautiful thing about this question is that there always is. This world is such a beautifully multifaceted wonder that everything can be seen from nearly infinite perspectives—different roles in life, different professions, demographics, socio-economic statuses, levels of privilege, and even from the perspective of fictional anthropomorphised bears. We truly have infinite options.
It is one thing to intellectualise the understanding that there are always other perspectives; it is another thing entirely to internalise and use this knowledge to make yourself a better person and to move the world forward in a collaborative direction. So, instead of asking, "What if there is more?" or "How could there be more?"—ask yourself, "In full knowledge that there is more, how can I overcome the challenge using a new story?"
Once we master this, we master our circumstances, position, and fate- nothing can stop us.
Why Do Some Ideas Change the Way You See Everything?
Such a juicy question (yes, weird visual). Our brains are networks in both a physical and a metaphorical way. We think in structures called mental models—networks of both domain-specific and non-specific patterns that help us discern the world around us. By no "fault" of our own, these mental models can be deeply flawed—through cultural practice, ritual, or upbringing, to name a few.
When we receive new information, we parse it through our mental models. If a piece of information does not fit, we have two options—accept it as an exception or deny that it is correct. Our "acceptance rules," for want of a better phrase, are sort of like a round hole—when ideas approach our acceptance hole (ugh), if they are not in the correct orientation or the correct shape, they bounce off us and we deny them. However, if they are either small enough or juuusssttt the right shape, they can pass through.
The other, hidden, wonder of mental models is that they only update after information has been parsed by our acceptance rules—meaning that unless we receive the right information, in the right way, and at the right time, it is unlikely to change us. But then, there can be something that is Goldilocks—it is just right and of such a significant size that once it moves to the other side, the update to your model is exponential.
Sometimes these things, whatever they are, can be paradigm- and mindset-breaking—shattering years of disillusionment or negative talk, or providing you with a new way of leveraging your skills and power. So naturally, things change from that day onwards.
There are a few ways to induce this, best done together for great effect—seek learning every day, seek expansion and acceptable discomfort each day, and seek out those who are masters to listen, watch, and study, as they have overcome the lower hurdles of the craft and play with the very foundations of its rules. Once you create a tiny habit that pushes those boundaries, you will find the world open to your boundless curiosity.
How Do You Stay Open-Minded Without Feeling Overwhelmed?
Open-mindedness is a state of mind, attitude, or mode of operation where you meet problems or occurrences with sincere questioning. What I mean by that is that when you encounter something in life, there are really two flavours of questions we ask: protective questions to guard us (e.g. "How could they do that to me?") and sincere questions to expand our understanding with a curiosity for what comes next.
Those who question in the former state often find the answers to their questions reinforce their own position, either proving something is "simple" or "too hard to grasp," meaning that growth does not eventuate. The latter state allows for that expansion.
Overwhelm occurs when we take in too much information for our current capability to process, although this varies for everyone depending on the topic - we all have a limit. I think that the goal with open-minded thinking is to seek the boundary of "overwhelm" and stop just before it. This sounds nebulous, and I appreciate that - it is - but the visceral, in-body experience of overwhelm is different from person to person. So, you need to practise getting overwhelmed to determine under what conditions it occurs and at what complexity level it occurs.
The difficulty is that if you are expanding yourself and growing, these limits also change. So, how you stay open-minded without getting overwhelmed is by following curiosity, expanding yourself, and finding the visceral boundaries that you currently have, stopping short of them and resting to give yourself the energy to do it again.
The process sounds unsexy, but the result is a more interesting life than you could ever imagine because the world is a beautiful place, and you can now explore whatever you wish to explore.
I hope this is a place where you can expand safely.
What If the Answers You’ve Been Given Aren’t Enough?
I find this question hard to answer without sounding glib. Answers to your questions, if done right, will never be enough. Let me explain. Every question and answer in life is predicated on assumptions we make about the thing we are questioning.
If we ask, "How do I overcome all my problems?" you might have assumed that all of your problems can be overcome. This, in turn, colours the answer that you receive. Through my experience as a scientist, I have learned that the more questioning you do of the underlying assumptions, the more you come to realise that what humans have come to think of as the fundamentals of life are not as logically solid as you might first think.
Before you get all tin foil hat—no, it doesn’t mean reality is a farce. It means that the things you might take to be true are actually infinitely more complex than you initially anticipated. A simple question like "Is the hat red?" begs more questions, like "How do you define red?" and "To whom?"
This might sound like a cop-out, but it isn’t—it is fascinating. The fact that the answers you are given never truly are enough is a sign you are asking the right questions and are best positioned to ask even more. The more you ask and seek answers, the more you come to know. The more you come to know, the more assumptions you find—until you realise the world is such a beautifully wonderful and fully incomprehensible thing.
It gives you permission to explore the world’s patterns without concern for borders between domains; things that apply to knitting might also apply to quantum entanglement, and the possible creations become near endless. What a beautiful world we live in, that every question we ask can transcend our human single-mindedness.
Allow yourself the grace to receive this signal from the world and sit in gratitude that there is more out there for you to find. A wonderer is a seeker of knowledge, and seekers of knowledge change the world.
Why Are We Drawn to the Unknown?
Because all of life lives there. The unknown is the bounds of our own personal experience - things we can learn from society and the world, which may have already figured it out - and the bounds of human knowledge - things which the human race is yet to figure out with a measure of accuracy. The unknown represents possibilities for us personally and for our species; it gives us hope that the world's pains and sufferings can be made sense of through exploration. Exploration would not exist without the unknown. Humans are curious creatures; they seek ways to improve themselves and overcome obstacles. Our society is an emergent property of this seeking mentality, all of us working together (sometimes indirectly) to seek answers to some of the grandest questions of human existence. What beauty there is in the unknown - let's explore it together.
What If The Answers You’re Looking For Can Only Be Found In Contradiction?
When most people think of contradiction, they think about people telling other people they are "wrong." I think that contradiction is much more nuanced than that. Think of it more like contrast. Contrast is about seeing the boundaries between your perspective and others' perspectives, centred on a specific idea or thing. The key is not to set a valuation or judgment on the "rightness" of the perspective, but instead to see what nuggets of truth lie in other perspectives—trust me, there is always something. Once you collate these nuggets of truth from a variety of different perspectives, updating your position becomes easier. It is not about agreeing with how someone has framed something, but more about seeking truth.
There are tools that people like Tim Ferriss use, like asking yourself, "What if I do the opposite?" and tools like SCAMPER that are ways of shifting perspective to try and learn fundamental truths about the thing you are engaging with. Through this seeking mentality, amazingly informative insights and answers crystallise.
So, the next time you are stuck, or stuck thinking, "How could they even believe that?"—think instead about, "What could the truth behind their statement be?" and you will find the world open up in front of you.
Expand Your Thinking with Thought-Provoking Explorations
Explorations are a dive into deeper ideas and questions I have about the world. They are an authentic look things that are puzzling and hopefully can be clarified through discussion. They are not a journey of curiosity made manifest in writing, hoping to impart some clarity for myself but also for you. You could start with some about:
🌎 Changing Perspectives:
🌎 Unanswered Questions:
What’s the Most Mind-Blowing Idea You’ve Ever Come Across?
Make yourself known on my social media channels and share a thought, a question, or a reflection - let’s explore it together. Facebook, LinkedIn, X (The artist formerly known as Twitter)