Season 1 - Episode 3: A Case For Not Being An Expert
Hey, it's Katy and I'm here to help you befriend your mind, body and soul. If you stick around with me long enough, you might find that you're a mindful soul too. Hello friend. Today, I want to start the episode by asking you a question.
When you look back at your childhood, do you have fond memories? What I mean by that is, do you look back and go, man, I miss the good old days when things were carefree and I didn't have to worry about much and I got to play and everything was fun and I didn't think about time?
Do you ever have fond memories about childhood in that way? On the flip side, if you didn't, do you ever have thoughts like, I didn't have a chance to just be carefree and sink into the moment and play and be curious and sort of do all of those things that we picture as childhood?
Either way, the practice that I'm going to be sharing with you today is one that I really love that kind of brings out this element of childhood in our life. It's one that we can tap into even as adults.
This is one of my very favorite mindfulness practices. I'm realizing right now that I think I say that about every mindfulness practice. This one is so sweet. The practice I want to share with you today is something called beginner's mind.
Beginner's mind is when we adopt an air of curiosity and the mind of a beginner. If you think about a beginner and children are kind of the ultimate beginners, they're not jaded yet. Hopefully, obviously many can be depending on their childhood history.
but children emerge into this world with curiosity, their eyes are bright and wide with wonder, and they're so in the moment. This is very similar to animals too. I think we can learn from our furry friends and how they're just in the moment, wagging their tail, sniffing around, being curious about things.
And beginner's mind can be contrasted with its opposite, which is expert's mind. And expert's mind already knows, right? They know everything. They've got the knowledge, they know the answers. And expert's mind is sort of door closing.
If you already know everything, if you already have all the answers, then there's nothing else to learn, there's nothing else to explore. And it's kind of like the end of the road, right? And that's a problem if we want to be open to new possibilities, if we want to always be able to learn new things and experience life in an unjaded way.
So obviously many of us, as we grow up, we sort of get jaded by the world, right? We go through painful experiences, reality hits us in the face. You know, we're told as we grow up to start becoming more and more mature, to take things seriously, to be responsible.
In school, we're taught to know the answer, right? We're praised if we have the quote unquote right answer and we know. And so we're really shaped into this idea that experts mind is the best, right?
Know the right answer and then get serious and launch into adulthood and be practical, right? Be responsible, earn money, work, do things that are productive. And this can really take away the magic of life.
And I'm here to argue that this is not our natural state. So beginner's mind, which is like a childlike wonder for the world, is something that everyone can practice. No matter how old you are, you can have this beginner's mind.
So the benefits of having beginner's mind is that we are able to enjoy life much more fully. We look around us with our five senses, okay? So vision, sound, touch, taste, smell and really taste the juicy fruit of life, right?
And when we're not in beginner's mind, we just skip over all that stuff. We're like, eh, I've had an apple before, no big deal. Or yeah, I've seen the ocean before. no big deal, right? And we stop wondering at things that we've experienced before because we've like been there, done that, and that doesn't have to be the way it is.
We can go out into the world and no matter how many times we've seen something, the truth is it's always changing and brand new in every moment. So just yesterday, actually, I take my cat on a walk in the evenings and I went out into my back yard like a grassy area and was like walking around with her and I got down on the ground and was looking at the grass.
This is just some plain old grass y 'all. There's like some clovers in there and as I zoomed in into this micro ecosystem in the grass, there was so much there. that I would have never even noticed if I hadn't like sunk down and really started observing what was there.
There were little water drops on the leaves and beneath the grass was this beautiful bright green moss that was like growing underneath the grass. So beginner's mind helps us explore the world in this way so that we can continue to feel that childlike wonder that we often just kind of forget about or push aside because we're told we got to like perk up and pay attention and you know get real as we get older.
And this is why a lot of people become jaded in life, right? Because they stop knowing how to really be in that moment and be curious about the future. So when we become into our experts mind and we start thinking we know how everything's gonna go.
Let's say you've had your heart broken. Let's say you've had loss in your life or you look around at the world and you see painful things happening. Getting into an experts mind and saying, yeah, well, I know how things go.
They always go wrong or bad things always happen. And you just start predicting that you know the way things are gonna turn out. Then life is miserable, right? And what you actually end up doing is closing the door on any possibility that it could be something different.
That maybe you will meet the person that you really connect with that things might heal and change that things shift in time, right? So beginner's mind really creates possibility for the future, which is critical for so many reasons.
So there's a mindfulness parable that I'm going to read to you right now that sort of illustrates this. It says one day a student graduated with a first class honors degree from a top university. Her friends and family celebrated and said how lucky she was.
She was sure to land a great job. But she replied, who knows, we shall see. As soon as the party was over, the country slipped into a deeper session. People were getting laid off, left, right, and center.
No company was employing anyone. She applied for more than 50 jobs to no avail. She didn't even get interviewed. Her parents and partner felt sorry for her. She said, who knows, we shall see. She decided to start up a business selling phones.
At first, it didn't seem to work, but suddenly, as demand picked up, the business started to make lots of money. She sealed a massive deal and eventually became a millionaire. She bought a new house overlooking the sea.
Others were amazed at her turn of fortune. She said, who knows, we shall see. Unfortunately, all her savings were lost when a big bank failed. Her house was repossessed and she had to move back in with her parents.
All those around her said how sorry they were about how things worked out. She smiled and said, who knows, we shall see. She read in the paper that the couple who were now living in her old house were completely flooded.
Due to rising sea levels, the foundation of the house became weak and had to be demolished. The insurance company didn't pay out and the couple lost everything. Everyone said how lucky she was to leave when she did.
She smiled and said, who knows, we shall see. So this story really illustrates that we can't necessarily judge how things will be or how things will work out and beginner's mind keeps us open and curious and it creates for a much smoother journey through life.
Right? So some of the mindfulness practices which I teach in depth in my programs and mindful soul school are ones that really are supported by this beginner's mind concept and so mindfulness is greatly about living in the present moment.
How do we focus on right here, right now, without trying to predict the future, without getting swept up into the past, and this is exactly what children do, right? This is what beginners do, like what am I doing right here?
Let me throw all my attention into this. And the way that we do that is through our five senses because our five senses are our direct tap into the present moment. So bringing all your awareness into what do my feet feel like when I walk through the grass barefoot?
What does the breeze feel like on my skin? Can I smell any fresh flowers that are blooming around me or just the smell of the earth as I walk, right? Or the tea? that I'm making in the morning. And so it's moving through every moment in your day with this enriched sense of what's here right now, right?
So hopefully this gives you something to think about and some practical tips that you can practice. So this is my challenge for you today is to take on this beginner's mind as if everything that you're seeing around you, you're seeing it for the first time, keeping your mind open to possibilities and open to your five senses to really savor and experience all that is around you to the fullest.
I would love to hear how this goes for you. And I'll talk to you next time. Be well. Ready to start your mindful soul journey. Sign up for my free Life Balance Workbook, linked in the show notes, and come hang out with me on my email list.
