Thought exercise

We all live with a set of beliefs that largely governs how we look at the world and what we do. However, sometimes need to think about possibilities outside those, without having to commit to them.

The way we can do that is to treat those possibilities as a thought exercise, allowing us to think about them without having to give up or modify any of our beliefs, or take on any new ones, just yet!

People and organisations are often trying to pursuade us to believe what they believe, or at least, want us to believe. However, we are not always ready to take on another's beliefs, regardless of how enthusiatically they espouse them. We need time to mull the concepts presented over in our minds, and see what they might mean as far as our own beliefs are concerned, before we consider making changes to our beliefs to accommodate another's.

Or, sometimes we just need to temporarily put aside our own beliefs, so we can get some new input that we might normally block out if we were only considering it for possible inclusion in our mainstream beliefs.

Now, this is not unlike the suspension of disbelief we accept when watching movies or reading books, and without which we would not enjoy the alternate reality being presented to us. Similarly, we need to give space in our set beliefs for alternative ways of looking at things being laid out before us, without unduly second-guessing every aspect of them as they unfold. Within this space, we may learn enough to pique our interest to pursue it further, or have enough information to decide that it is not something we should be considering.

Either way, we have done our due diligence to ourselves, and given ourselves permission to explore possibilities beyond our thinking norms. A thought exercise is just that: time given to opening our minds to an alternative way of looking at things, free of our own prejudices or biases. It is a time of contemplation, of seeing possibilities arise and subside, as we work our way through the implications of the ideas.