Allowing ourselves to be open to different views, to our emotions and to other people gives us a power that once you discover it will make going back to being a closed person impossible.
We limit ourselves in life in so many ways by what we tell ourselves about ourselves, closing our minds to other possibilities. Driven by fear we’d rather close ourselves from anything challenging too. Anything that involves feeling vulnerable.
The biggest one is closing off to our emotions and we more often than not bury them and force them down. The only outcome of that is we then burst out at others and ourselves, we lash out, overreact and cause more emotional turmoil.
We are taught that no good comes from emotions, where in fact everything that matters in life is about our emotions, the things that touch our hearts and souls.
We flourish by learning to be open to our emotions, lean into them as Brene Brown says, to share them with the people who matter and respond to others with empathy. When we learn to open our mind to others, new ideas and most importantly of all, to allow ourselves to be open to the real person inside us, then we realise and believe that we can be who we want to be.
Being open is a question of practice, but as we learn we realise what an amazing new world there is beyond our blinkers and the possibilities are endless.
The other thing is to help the people who matter to us to become open by not being judgemental or critical, by listening and empathising.
Philip Dodson 