A different point-of-view could do wonders.

Amateur. Novice. Newbie. Rookie. Greenhorn. There are numerous words and phrases that describe the newcomer. To many, it’s a designation you want to get past as quickly as possible so you can eventually be considered an expert. To some, being a beginner can make you feel like an annoyance or a hindrance to the team.

Yet there comes a time in every professional’s career, where a problem or question arises that expertise alone won’t fix. It’s possible you insist that you already know the answer because you’ve built up years of experience in your field, except it’s not working and your preconceptions are getting in the way. Maybe you’re convinced that if you attack the situation from a different angle, you’ll have a breakthrough.

If that’s happening to you right now and you’re looking for a way around this particular block, then good news — you actually do already have the answer. You just have to throw your hard earned expertise out the window and adopt a “beginner’s mindset.”

What does having a beginner’s mindset mean?

The idea of adopting a “beginner’s mind” stems from the Zen Buddhist concept of “shoshin,” which basically means changing the way you think by being more open to possibilities, being more eager to learn despite what you may already know, and to shed your preconceptions. By contrast, the “expert mind” can often shut itself out from possibilities outside its realm of knowledge or expertise.

This is all because beginners tend to see things differently than experts do, as they don’t have experiences that could engender some preconceived notion of how to tackle a subject or obstacle. Having a beginner’s mindset means being able to look at a situation and address it as if you’re just starting out.

Those with a beginner’s mindset are willing to learn new techniques or approach things in a way they wouldn’t as an expert. Beginners are more willing to seek help and ask questions when necessary, opening up new potential pathways of thought.

Benefits of the beginner’s mindset

Aside from the aforementioned ways that adopting a beginner’s mindset could help in life and in business, there are additional benefits that altering your perspective can provide. The following are just some of the added benefits that many suggest can take form if you just let your expertise fall by the wayside for a bit.

• Creativity boost. If you’ve been doing things the same way for years and years, chances are you’ve developed a neat and tidy formula for how you go about work and life. By allowing new ideas to take hold and become potential solutions, you can come up with ideas the you and your colleagues might not have considered normally.
• Increased connections. When approaching everything as a newcomer, you’re more likely to begin talking to the people around you. Picking your friends’ or colleagues’ brains shows that you’re looking to be a team player. People like someone who’s willing to work and looking to improve at the same time, which in itself could become contagious to those around you.
• Reconnect with your expertise. Now, we’ve been talking a lot about how expertise can be a hindrance, and that’s still the case. But when you approach something in your field as a beginner, it places you back in that moment where you fell in love with what you do. By seeing things from the ground level again, you can effectively rediscover why you’re passionate about whatever it is you’re doing.
• Less stress. There’s a certain level of stress that comes with knowledge and expertise. If you feel like you should already have the answer to something and you’re still having a rough go of it, you can put undue stress upon yourself. As you focus on your growth as a “beginner,” you care less about the end result.
• Become more engaged. If you feel like you know everything there is to know about something, it becomes very easy to get bored. It could also cause you to miss opportunities to learn something new about your field. When you realize that there’s more to what you’re doing than you thought, it will motivate you to reach your goals and do better in the process. As new developments happen around you, a beginner’s mindset allows you to embrace those changes.

How to approach a beginner’s mindset.

Now that you know what it is and how it can help you in multiple aspects of your life, you’ve still got to put it into practice. And while there are so many ways to embrace the beginner’s mindset, we’ve collected some easy ways to get started.

• Stop assuming. If you’re using a beginner’s mindset, you shouldn’t act like you know how things “should” go. The word “should” means you have experienced something before and thus, you know how things will pan out. That kind of thinking can cause you to fall into old methods, leaving you closed off from the new.
• Ask questions. Sometimes, it’s best to seek information from someone else. When approaching something as a beginner, you should search for a person or group of people that can show you how they handle things. Maybe their methods will be different from yours, leading you to new ways of approaching a problem.
• Seek out new experiences and tactics. You might have a set way of doing things, but a beginner wouldn’t. As such, be receptive to be willing to try new things and realize that you might not succeed on the first try. That’s okay because a beginner isn’t expected to knock it out of the park on the first try.
• Try to improve. Becoming better at something is pretty much the goal for every beginner. If you’re burdened by your knowledge and expertise, then you might feel like you don’t need to improve yourself at all. That’s a dangerous place to be, as nothing remains static in this world.
• Recognize and ignore biases. As you go about your day, be sure to take stock in yourself. Recognize when you’re letting your existing knowledge base take the wheel and guide your decisions. A true beginner’s mindset should tackle everything without such biases in the way.

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Bottom Line

Embracing the beginner’s mindset really can change your personal and professional life. By letting your hard-earned expertise fall by the wayside and embracing the feeling of approaching a topic with a fresh set of eyes, you may find methods that you’d never have considered before. There are very few things in life where only a single answer or method is the right one, so being open to new and interesting ways of tackling challenges can be a huge boon to you and the people around you.