Are you an open-minded person?

Eddie Chai Yu Hao
2 min readJan 19, 2021
Image source: pixabay

Asking yourself, “are you an open-minded person?” If no/yes, what makes you like that?

According to Cambridge dictionary, open-minded is defined as “willing to consider ideas and opinions that are new or different to your own”.

Be an open-minded person doesn’t mean you need to accept all the different ideas and thoughts from you, but what you need to do is — to consider them.

You still can reject others’ opinion that you think is wrong and not appropriate. Be open-minded is not open your mind to accept others and close your mind to reject yourself. This will only make you losing yourself! If you yourself did not accept yourself, how could you accept others and how could people accept you?

Open-minded people know to be oneself. They recognize their own strengths and weaknesses. They know that nobody is perfect, neither themselves nor others. It makes them more willing to embrace the differences, as they know people’s opinions and ideas may sometimes go right or wrong. Instead of ignoring others’ views, open-minded people would consider all the views from others and oneself. If they think others’ ideas are better and more suitable, then they will choose to accept. In turn, if they think their own ideas are better, then they will stick to it and persuade others to accept the ideas by giving them reasonable explanation. They will not use the authoritarian way to force people to accept their ideas, instead, they will use a friendly or ideological way to influence people. Martin Luther King Jr. is a good example. He never force people to accept his opinion, but he used his ambitious way to influence the people of America.

Open-minded people know they cannot get everyone’s support and acceptance. They cannot get everyone’s compliment, like, and love. Even how best he/she is or done, there are still people who don’t like or agree him/her. They know the rule of world. So they appreciate all the encouragement as well as the discouragement. Encouragement will make them better, while discouragement will make then even stronger!

Open-minded people love reading. They read different authors’ books and articles, rather than reading specific author’ book. Reading is a process of accepting and rejecting different views and opinions from different people (authors). Reading helps widening our horizon. There is a quote saying, “books open windows to the world and have the power to transform lives”. Reading a book is like discovering a new world. Sometimes it may challenge your ‘old’ thinking, and open up your mind.

Lastly, ask yourself again, “are you an open-minded person?”

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Eddie Chai Yu Hao

I am a person who loves reading, writing, and exploring new things. Currently, I am studying public management in Universiti Utara Malaysia.