Beginner’s Mind

Beginners mind or “don't know” mind is a one of the most powerful tools you can bring to bear in your journey through change. Recall that when you were a child you knew so little that you had no idea what wasn’t possible, and hence your world was full of possibility.

As we age and acquire experience we learn about the world we live in. That learning is partly explicit: we take classes in school or college, we choose books to read and so on. Or it can be implicit: we infer knowledge about ‘how the world works’ through our experiences of it, our social interactions, the values within our family of origin, the society, culture and country we live in, etc.

Both types of knowledge shape the space of possibility in our minds. There is a sense (a very real sense) in which your mind is building a model of the external world and your relationship to it, and that model is being continually updated as new information and experience becomes available. The “hot things hurt” rule gets baked in very quickly after the first time you play with fire. The “I’m bad at maths” rule can get wired in after an unskillful teacher mocks your understanding or test results. Evolutionarily, a human mind is more ‘fit’ (has a greater chance of success) if it is a more accurate predictor of future events, but the world simply contains too much information for us to carry and continually process it all, so the mind makes rules, shortcuts and heuristics that give it quick answers to difficult questions.

All of which is useful, but it tends to reduce the space of possibility in our minds. Especially as we get older, we can become more and more convinced that we know ‘what’s right’ and where our place is in the world. This makes change harder.

Hence ‘beginner’s mind’. We actively try to cultivate an attitude of openness to possibility. “Maybe I don’t know everything.” “Maybe there are new experiences here for me to explore.”

Beginner’s mind gives us permission to not be experts, to not be adults, to not be grown-ups. It releases us from the burden of having to ‘get things right’ or ‘know the right thing to do’. Often as adults (or adolescents) we can passively shamed for not knowing random stuff that is somehow important to other people or some social group. So ‘knowing’ and being confident in our knowledge becomes important. But we can also get calcified into particular beliefs, thoughts and attitudes that limit our ability to grow and change, or to adapt to new circumstance or new knowledge.

But when we can say to ourselves “Hey, I’m a beginner at this. Don’t expect me to know anything!” we re-open that space of possibility. We can become again a kid wandering around the beach on a summer day, or playing with a skateboard for the first time.

Beginner’s mind is one of the most powerful and important tools available to you when making a change to your life. Let go of your expectations, let go of getting it right, let go of the need for certainty. Become a beginner.