The Vital Need to Upgrade

There is an interesting phenomenon in the world that is constantly changing.  It is the need to upgrade.  Upgrading the things in our life is the result of progress and improvements in technology.  We upgrade our cars as they become more fuel efficient, safer and technologically advanced.  We upgrade our computers as they become faster and have higher memory capacity. 

In fact, we upgrade almost everything in our lives with regularity.  However, there is one thing that strangely many people resist upgrading and often maintain in the exact same circumstances their entire lives.  That is their mindset. 

What we mean by mindset is the way that people think about fundamental issues.  Their attitude or mentality about things.  We are fine to upgrade almost everything else, but for some strange reason, we like to hold onto the same thoughts and ideas our entire lives. 

Now, what usually happens is that we are born and we learn our mindset and attitudes from the circumstances we are in and grow up in.  Very often people go away to school and their mindset changes dramatically based on a whole new world they may not have been aware of.  Then, they become adults and lock in a mix of all of the ideas they have learned and like the most.  It is at this point, that most people keep that mindset the rest of their lives.  Occasionally, we have minor changes in attitude on an issue, but for the most part, our fundamental beliefs do not grow and mature.

It is clearly quite easy to keep the same mindset our entire lives, but is it healthy? 

Cars, phones, computers and bodies, but…

We continually upgrade our phones, cars, clothes, computers, homes, etc.  The list is very long, but for some reason we feel that our minds do not require the same treatment and we leave them off the list.  Would we continue to use medicines that are old, expired or proven to be less effective than newer ones?  Would we continue to go to a doctor that used treatments that were very old or would we want them to use the latest proven techniques and information to keep us healthy?  The answer is obvious, but for some reason we treat our mental body different from our physical body.

This is not to say the older ideas do not have merit.  The basics of morality could be argued to stretch a point, but most people would agree that we need morality and laws to keep society safe and that many of them are based on very old ideas.  However, new ideas and viewpoints keep our minds and spirits healthy and foster healthy growth in our conscious and subconscious.  We have discussed before the amazing way that the Wright Brothers kept an open mind and continued to change their mindset to suit new ideas.

The point is to keep an open mind and heart to new ideas and to be willing to upgrade our thoughts and mindset.  Old ideas give us a solid basis of knowledge and new ideas help us to evolve and grow.