My opinions are not mine and they are holding me back.
Give multiple and opposing views equal respect and disdain at the same time. Treating a thought as your own, as an opinion "you hold" greatly holds you back from a great deal of valuable perspective. Of course you surely hold some world-view and gauge things from that position but try to cultivate more of these positions as if you were someone else.
Don't get your sense of self so wrapped up in all the thoughts and ideas that flit about in your brain. You will surely be a different person in 1, 5, 10, 20 years and may well have a completely different perspective then.
There is very little original thought, mostly there is just repetition and re-contextualization of the same old stuff. That is not a bad thing but you should really divest yourself from being emotionally wrapped up in opinions (yours or others) and treat them as the conclusions of research papers with small sample sizes.
Now when you converse with someone, stop thinking about "your" response, and just listen, really listen to what they are saying and try to really understand where they are coming from so you can integrate that into your thinking.
As an addition, your opinions are mostly formed from the information you have and haven't been exposed to. It's easy to come to a conclusion if someone feeds you specific facts you can verify. But there may be other facts that can change the perspective that are not so easy to verify.
We don't have perfect information, so clinging to a perspective is bound to create some sort of conflict when you are exposed to valid information that may change your perspective. Either you discount and ignore that information, or you are forced to abandon your identity and get emotionally hurt(which can be a good thing if it causes growth and maturity).
I think you may mean "My opinions are not me", or "I am not my opinions" gives you the space to separate your identity from your thoughts, giving you the freedom to change.
No, that’s something very different. The point GP is trying to make is that most opinions people hold on things are not actually their own formed conclusions, they are just regurgitations from authorities they trust.
This happens excessively in politics. Suddenly a huge chunk of a political faction will have the same “opinion” on a complex topic they have no day-to-day interaction with or previous educational coverage. When you try to dig deeper on these topics people hold such fervent “opinions” on, it turns out that it’s just a restatement of what they heard from a friend/talking head.
I heard similar phrasing used by one psychotherapist that I admire, "I am different from my wishes" and "I am different from my (past) behavior". He once said jokingly that if someone realizes that, he can give them a "60 year warranty on their mental health".
What I also find interesting is that this idea is rather old, it can be found in Christianity, for example, where "devil is tempting you", that is thoughts and wishes you have might not be your own (but from some demon tempting you). It may sound a bit silly in modern times, but it boils down to the same idea.
I like the related Marc Andreesen model, have strong opinions, weakly held. To get anywhere new requires some degree of (probably misplaced) confidence in what you're doing. The key is balancing that with the ability to apply new information to your model, possibly even doing a 180 on what you believed was true.
I learned this a few years ago. The phrase I still remember is "your idea is not your identity" (probably from this article[1]). This completely changed my mindset and the way I communicate.
Not sure where I've read this about originality, but the idea is "there is no such thing as original thought, only original perspective"
Give multiple and opposing views equal respect and disdain at the same time. Treating a thought as your own, as an opinion "you hold" greatly holds you back from a great deal of valuable perspective. Of course you surely hold some world-view and gauge things from that position but try to cultivate more of these positions as if you were someone else.
Don't get your sense of self so wrapped up in all the thoughts and ideas that flit about in your brain. You will surely be a different person in 1, 5, 10, 20 years and may well have a completely different perspective then.
There is very little original thought, mostly there is just repetition and re-contextualization of the same old stuff. That is not a bad thing but you should really divest yourself from being emotionally wrapped up in opinions (yours or others) and treat them as the conclusions of research papers with small sample sizes.
Now when you converse with someone, stop thinking about "your" response, and just listen, really listen to what they are saying and try to really understand where they are coming from so you can integrate that into your thinking.