Adopt New Mental Models to Enlarge Your Perspective

b. Adopt New Mental Models to Enlarge Your Perspective.

In much the same way that familiarity breeds comfort, our preferred thought patterns, and mental models give us a comfort zone from which to operate. In our comfort zone, we think and act in the same way without venturing outside of what we are used to.

A mental jail that limits our cognitive abilities to a certain set pattern is every bit as restrictive as a physical jail. If you can only see things in one way, your behavior, experiences, and outcomes will undoubtedly remain the same, creating a cycle of predictable decisions which in turn, result in the same outcomes that are characteristic of your decisions.

Opening yourself up to new opportunities and experiences requires that you first adopt new ways of thinking and perceiving situations. Acquiring new mental models will not only increase your understanding of systems and the world in general, but it will also broaden your view of life. Varied mental models give you different perspectives with which to interpret and understand occurrences and systems.

Developing a better understanding of situations will enhance your decision-making process, which will, in turn, better outcomes. Through a well-developed mental model structure, we can develop better decision-making skills and increase our ability to solve problems and identify opportunities.

Accumulating mental models and creating a latticework of interdisciplinary models is instrumental in improving our thinking capacity and our ability to see situations from multiple perspectives. When we rely on a fixed number or set of mental models, we, in effect, limit our range of thought, our capacity to generate new ideas and the aptitude for finding solutions to problems.

To improve ourselves through behavior, change, we must first change the way we think and how our thoughts influence our actions. This is only possible if we are willing to expand our set of mental models and set aside our belief systems. Our attitudes, values, beliefs, actions, and behavior are shaped by our thoughts. To achieve something, we must first conceive it in our minds before we can bring it into reality.

The importance of mental models can thus not be stressed enough. Not only do they affect our personal growth and development, but they also influence our interactions and experiences with others and our effectiveness at the workplace and in other intellectual pursuits. Looking at the world through the perspective of one subject or body of knowledge leads to a limited and biased perception of the world and limits our ability to adapt our thoughts to reflect reality.

Our education system mainly focuses on creating experts in specific bodies of knowledge such as biology, physics, geology, and many other specialist disciplines. To be exemplary thinkers, we must be willing to break out of the mold of our fields of expertise and pursue liquid knowledge. Liquid knowledge is the knowledge that encompasses multiple fields and has utility across various situations in day to day life.

Liquid knowledge facilitates the formation of interlinked concepts within the mental model. It forms co-relationships between related concepts establishing similarities and areas of interactions across different fields of knowledge and expertise. These linkages within the mental model are important in creating opportunities and innovative ideas that would otherwise be missed if we limited ourselves to just one area of expertise.

Mastering the fundamental principles of each discipline will open up your view of the world and enable you to perceive situations from multiple points of view and enhance your understanding of the world.