How to break open echo chambers with gratitude

People make their own little worlds. They cling to their worldviews and beliefs like children to their favorite teddy bears. It is the unconscious action of decorating a comfortable echo chamber. There is so much going on in the world that a low resolution sense of meaning and understanding acts as a program masking the uncertainty and chaos all around us.

So you want to change someone's mind? Why? If we tend to focus so much on persuasion than we don't take in the subtleties of different views. If we cling to hard to a view, we can indoctrinate ourselves. We can become rigid and dogmatic. Pretty soon we start believing everything that we think! We think that our view is the best and worthy of projecting on others. One must really check themselves in every process of thought that they think they believe.

What if trying to refine your argument and being persuasive is not necessarily the way to go? What if we take the back to seat to having and agenda and focus more on listening? After all, listening is an ultimate act of love and attention! There are some simple things you can ask yourself and others to kick start the process of breaking people's thought patterns, echo chambers and paradigms.

It begins with gratitude and the diminishing of expectations. What are some things that you are grateful for? They can be the small things and the big things. They are all tied together. It's about laying the groundwork to develop a mindset built upon gratitude. It's a useful construct. A tool that allows for awesome results that can create new opportunities for the future.

Every thing that happens to us whether we see it as good or tragic, can have a response of gratitude. It is shifting from thinking that things happen to us to things happening for us. It is taking a pain and planting it in the ground to see future flowers. Gratitude relies on the continual process of seeing and thanking at each moment of strife and opportunity. You can thank yourself, the moment, a person or even a fictional person that you created in your head. It is the act that makes all the difference and not the object of thankfulness. You can say thank you in your head or out loud. The fact that you are even able to be grateful is the essence of gratitude. What a treat and opportunity it is to be alive. What an honor it is to breathe air and share in the amazing senses that were given to us at birth.

When you have a gratitude mindset, you don't worry too much about the outcomes. You can only be grateful for the act of gratitude itself. Everything that happens is a bonus and part of the ongoing experience. Gratitude doesn't thrive on having an end goal. Having a gratitude mindset doesn't care about the response of someone else. If you choose to express your gratitude to someone, that is all that matters. If they light up, it's a treat, but not a main motivator to keep on being grateful. Just keep on being thankful.

So how can someone break someone out of their echo chambers with gratitude?

1. Listen intently. Let a person speak their mind. When they are done talking, thank them for taking time out of their day to express how they feel. Most of the time people need to talk things out to figure out how they actually think. This requires mistakes most of the time. We learn best when we are stumbling and open to expressing how we really think and feel.

2. Let them finish fully and ask questions on why they have the views they have. Where did they come from? What was the process? How do they feel connected to their ideas? How does it make them feel? You want to focus on the feeling aspect. It is hard to reason someone out of an unreasonable or seemingly reasonable view. The key is to remain flexible and not try to steer them into any type of direction. Do not try to convert. Who are you to try to convert someone?

3. Tell them how you feel about their views, but don't make it personally about them. Make sure and focus more on the ideas and not the person. Don't shoot the messenger! Tell them that you are thankful again for what they said. Avoid any outright criticisms or advice. Who are you to give advice anyhow?

4. The important thing to is to acknowledge the feelings you have and what the other person expresses as well. If you see the person getting frustrated, ask them how they feel. It is paramount to check in and open up an environment where people can express themselves freely without judgment and criticism. Remember, your mind creates an image of that person in your head. If you start to get frustrated with what a person if saying, your emotions are reacting to how your mind is creating the image of the person in front you. Thank your mind for creating these images as a means of making peace with how it operates. If you try to control too much of the thought and emotions, you will just get caught in it. Remember, what you resist persists, but also tends to get stronger.

"Invite those little demons in for tea. You can always clean up after they leave." 

5. Do not focus on an endpoint or goal. Your whole act is to express gratitude and be grateful that you can share a moment with someone even if it seems like things are going in circles. That is that. That is it. There is always the option of creating space if there tension arises, allowing for space away or space between is a huge part of the gratitude mindset. Honor the silence. Do not feel as if you have to fill the air with noise and words to comfort the people or yourself around you. Let things simply be and see what happens.

Sitting with silence is one of the best activities you can do to express your gratitude. Sometimes silence is all we need to stop, breathe and process all the things we have felt and seen. 

All in all, creating a list or a method to open someone else to new views seems a little silly. I am grateful for expressing this to you if you have made it this far in to the writing. I am grateful for your presence and time it took you to make it this far. Even if you didn't, that is fine. It would be hard for me to know anyway!

Most of us think we know what we are doing. Who are we kidding? Ha! Does it even matter? Be grateful for each moment and find out. Relax the thoughts that you need to find meaning or that you need to get to certain mental place to feel good, comfortable, content and/or blissful. What matters is right now. It always has. It is all we have and when we simply show up and flow with what happens, then we can learn so much about ourselves and how we see the world.

Gratitude allows us to experience a world that doesn't center around us or the image we have of ourselves. Being grateful lets us appreciate every step with every moment. Every up and down. Every twist and turn. How would we know what happiness feels like without sadness? Why even label the feelings we feel? Why not just feel them out? Experience each sensation to its fullness and try not to escape from them. Allow things to happen and let it unravel. If there's something you cannot control, be grateful for it. With this new sense of gratitude, one can truly be present with life itself and not apart from it.

To be truly grateful is to truly live and die with each moment.
Act as if Gratitude is the most real thing that can exist in this world.

DG