All of us - and I mean all of us - are susceptible to creating our own bubbles.

It’s comfortable.

Engaging with like-minded people from either an economic, occupational, political or even geographic perspective comes natural to us. Life is stressful and the easiest thing to do is not get out of that bubble. For a lot of us, it may be one of the few true safe spaces we have. Those spaces aren’t inherently bad things on their own!

Then again, with the tech we have today and an inherent knack for avoiding discomfort, we have the ability to truly build our own realities. Especially when we have a year of limited mobility and in-person interactions. Staying in that bubble kills what perspective you have.

What does it look like to lose perspective? The clip of this brief Larry King conversation captures it perfectly.

Someone who makes the mental jump from a cup of coffee to private jets in describing a luxury item is at risk for having lost some sort of perspective with the real world.

Having a lack of perspective and only being around people like you is an efficient way to be radicalized to a certain POV. This could look like a lot of things! It could be millionaire tech bros in the bay area creating their own weird out-of-touch social bubbles to the political manifestations of radical thinking we see today. Gaining perspective helps us avoid thinking in extremes.

When we think in extremes, every little shift in society becomes a do or die moment.

It’s exhausting.

So where do we start? Here’s what I’m trying.

How Do We Gain Perspective? Start By Reading Widely

This is one of my goals for the year. Not to just read a certain quantity of books (30) but variety. Why?

#1. It stretches my brain. Reading the same type of thing over and over again is like working out the same muscles again and again. It doesn’t help you in the long term. Getting outside of my normal comfort zone does help me grow a bit. This doesn’t just apply to reading “across the aisle.” It applies to the type of content you pick up. Only reading a certain genre of books (business, political, fiction, harlequin romance novels, whatever...) is better than NOT reading but doesn’t inspire nearly as much growth.

#2: It helps me build empathy. Even with people I vehemently disagree with. This can even apply to fiction. Everything is written through a certain lens and communicating a certain worldview one way or another. If I wonder “why does that person believe in _____?” or “why do they think that ______?”, reading something from that POV is helpful. Even if I’m likely to come to the same conclusions as the countering opinion, I can at least see how they got to that conclusion.

#3: I will better articulate my own beliefs. If you are trying to get someone to try a new way of working, sell in a product, campaign for a politician or even convert to a religion, you need to understand more than your side of the story. Every (good) content marketer knows that you need to make the customer the hero of the story, not the product you’re selling. It’s hard to apply that approach to day-to-day life if you don’t know how your POV contrasts against someone else’s. Not just understanding the ways you’re different but trying to understand the why.

This article from Jonah Goldberg (appropriately titled “For Your Own Good, Read Widely”) explains this idea well. A snippet on why varied perspectives matter in keeping your own head:

Pat Moynihan was right when he said everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. But what that aphorism leaves out is that different groups can pay attention to different sets of facts. It’s not necessarily that one group has a “different truth” than another group (though that certainly happens)—it’s that each group emphasizes, includes, or excludes different information. Reading widely can simply help you discover facts that get lost in the narratives of your own side.

My two cents: reading widely should help you better understand why you think/believe/do the things you do.

Don’t Just Read Widely, Have a Wide(ish) Social Circle

Easier said than done during COVID. It’s also easier for my to type than to actually do being an introvert. Engaging with people who think and believe differently than you do helps you humanize those perspectives. You may end up seeing that you have more in common with folks that you thought were totally at odds with you.

COVID has made this harder (with terrible polarization consequences) but life won’t always be this way. There is a finish line. As best as you can in your community, try and spend time with people different than you. There’s something about in-person interaction that helps lower the temperature at-large in the world. It also helps us be more empathetic people. More empathetic people tend to make better leaders, parents, siblings and overall better citizens.

If I sit in my own echo chamber, the only reason I will believe the things I do, work the way I do or approach life in general the way I do is because it’s the way everyone else in my little self-imposed reality bubble does things. Granted, it’s a good thing to have a small group of people you’re around a lot who make you a better person. That said those people who make you better are rarely “yes men” 100% of the time.

Another Good Idea

If you are looking for other ways to help lower the temperature around you, the following five minutes are really worth listening to. It’s a clip of this longer interview and focuses more on politics and religion but feel like the idea David French proposes here are worth considering.

What about you?

2020 was terrible but it’s naïve to think that 2021 won’t also be challenging. There will be times to consider other perspectives.

There will also be times to boldly proclaim 2+2 =4, even when others want to convince you otherwise.

Regardless, I’m confident there will be a lot of opportunities for all of us to grow this year. What ideas do you have to help grow? I’d love to hear them!