Beautiful Mind _ Attitude

It is not about the Oscar winning movie, but the practicality of having a beautiful mind. It is also my attempt to digest Edward de Bono's "how to have a beautiful mind". I used to think affection, kindness and good understanding for others as part of a beautiful mind. I concentrated more on "dos" and did not think about "don'ts" in relation to a beautiful mind.


In this post, I am sharing some points from de Bono's "How to have a beautiful mind" for you to ponder. It might also be helpful to take stock in our "EQ account".


We all have opinions based on similar experiences we had before. How we agree or disagree with, or differ from family members, friends and colleagues is the attitude. Who do I think I am?

1) Mr/Ms know-all who is always right

2) Mr/Ms guardian of values

3) Mr/Ms sympathy who always seems to be dumb and yet gets lots for himself/herself

4) Mr/Ms over reasonable making no conclusion

5) The bully

6) The ally to the top or the most powerful ones

7) The innovator who always looking for opportunity to suggest new ideas

8) The bored person who had heard everything before and thus bored to listen to others


I would like to add one more personality "Mr/Ms busy". I have high tendency to fall into this trap when I have many issues and limited time in hands. Being a comparatively quick thinker, I have minimum patience to explain the details to others. Thus, failing to communicate well enough.


Whether I act like which one out of the nine mentioned above also depends on how I perceive the person whom I am talking to. When I am dealing with people whom I perceived as a "person", I tend to have a respectful response to him/her. Wait a minute! Aren't we talking about ACTing or PROACTing instead of REACTing? Isn't it the ultimate purpose of training ourselves to have a beautiful mind? See, I was just caught giving excuse for my ugly mind :)

De Bono continued to explain the link between how individuals see a conversation and their attitudes. Those who see an interaction as a battle will work to win. Those who play power game all the time sacrifice their own opinion and support what the most powerful person at the table says. Some use conversations as machines on which they exercise their mind. Some just look forward to learning something whenever they interact with people and some just enjoy the moment. The explorer attitude lead an individual to fully understand the situation and find out the truth. However, the explorer is still one step away from making things happen. Only those with constructive attitude will design a way forward.

In my opinion, different attitudes are embedded within us. At a given situation, one of them comes forward and gives commend and control the interaction. Watch yourself on which attitude is leading you in which situation. With awareness and practice, we should be in-charge to allow some beautiful attitudes to come up and the ugly ones stay behind. Let's start working towards having beautiful attitudes. NOW!