Avoid the slow, painful death of the echo chamber
My first reawakening happened in my mid-30s.
I had stagnated. I was stuck in a job that was crushing my mental, physical, and spiritual health. Ignoring the obvious impact of my career path on my life, I went from problem to problem, trying to find a magic bullet to fix my mess.
After spending the evening in the ER with anxiety-induced heart palpitations, I knew it was time for a drastic change. I decided to add the stress of going back to school to finish my bachelor’s degree to my already crazy life.
It was there I first learned about the power of differing perspectives. Classic authors resonated with me in a way they hadn’t before. As I read so many great works of literature, the boundaries of my thoughts and beliefs expanded. The experience began to force me to rethink my victimhood worldview.
While I may not have known it at the time, I had discovered a universal truth:
Our ability to grow correlates to our willingness to consider different viewpoints.
Let’s take a look at some steps you can take to gain differing perspectives to help you grow.
Get Out of the Echo Chamber
Many people surround themselves with friends who look, talk, and think like them.
Living in the echo chamber provides a lot of validation, but it may also be quite harmful to your growth and health.
If your circle of friends never challenges your ideas or offers a different point of view, it’s time to expand your circle of friends.
You want friends who will always support you but will also challenge you to think differently.
Friends who show you a different perspective than you can see on your own.
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed.
Proverbs 15:22
Don’t Linger in Your Comfort Zone
Like the echo chamber, the comfort zone will cause you to stagnate and eventually fall back in life. Often we fall into a pattern that looks something like this:
- Things are comfortable
- We enjoy the comfort
- Life knocks us out of our comfort zone through some hardship
- We get uncomfortable enough to make some changes
- We work hard to get back to step 1, where things are comfortable.
And the cycle repeats.
And repeats.
We keep getting stuck in this loop because when things are comfortable, we often ease up, soaking up the good times. We need to push on through our comfort zones and continue to grow.
The comfort zone may not necessarily be a place of ease, but more one of familiarity.
Where things feel just predictable enough we feel like we can let our foot off the gas pedal.
The phrase “I’d rather have the devil I know than the one I don’t” is a perfect illustration of this.
Just enough ease and predictability to hinder my growth, thank you.
Don’t fall for it. It’s a trap!
Befriend Your Local Devil’s Advocate
The opposite of the people in your echo chamber, a devil’s advocate is someone who takes the contrarian viewpoint.
The phrase “Devil’s Advocate” originated in the Catholic Church. Their role was to argue against the sainthood of a candidate. They do this to uncover any hidden character flaws that may exclude a person from sainthood.
A devil’s advocate will make your ideas stronger and challenge you to keep growing as they bring different perspectives.
Vet Your Ideas Yourself
If you are stuck trying to decide if a certain course of action is the right one, another approach is to vet it yourself. You can use some structured questions to help you play your own devil’s advocate.
For example, listing out all the ways a plan may fail can help you find the blind spots you aren’t seeing.
Another approach is to put yourself in the shoes of someone trying to sell you on the opposing idea. What are the strengths of the opposing idea? What are the weaknesses of your proposed idea?
Vetting your ideas yourself works best when you can do so without letting your emotions rule you. If you are trying to make a decision about an emotionally charged area of your life, you will be best served in seeking the counsel of others.
Closing
Considering differing perspectives makes our ideas stronger, leading to more growth and fulfillment. While it may be appealing to implement whatever plan seems best to us at the moment, it’s vital to consider other perspectives that may reveal weaknesses in our plans.