Opinions

Most people have opinions on almost every subject we can think of and are prepared to tell anyone who asks what they are. Nothing wrong with this unless someone is looking for help on making an important decision or change in their life. What that person is really looking for is an informed opinion otherwise known as experience.
So how can we discover whether or not we are getting an informed opinion?
By using the skill of asking better questions. Instead of asking a person what they think about something we would ask do they have any experience with whatever we are interested in. In essence; does their resume have the skills to answer our need.
Your thoughts?

Traps

Our habits of thinking can easily lead some of us into a trap that we sometimes don't recognize. When we are satisfied with our viewpoint on a topic we have effectively established a filter on our senses and our thinking that stops from reexamining that viewpoint even in the face of new information. We literally cannot even see that new information because of our filters. Unfortunately this can occur at a very early age or be affected by work and personal interactions.
Our filters in essence create a box within which we look for our answers. This leads us into the trap of continuing to ask the same question over and over again and frustrating ourselves by always getting answers from our box that don't work.
Perhaps the way to break the trap is to start searching for questions rather than continuing to look for more answers within our filtered box. New questions can come from reading, movies, conversations, controversy and so on. When we start looking for questions we will often find that we have a answer to that question that resonates with us and changes the filters we use.
Your thoughts?

Patience

There are undervalued skills in this time of instant communication, instant social groups, instant news and needing instant results.
Most of us when we are making a change or achieving a goal tend to go overboard. Jumping into anything or everything that can stack the odds in our favor to complete the change/goal instantly without any consideration for our current habits and skills.
We often attempt most times to change too much and do it too quickly when it requires overturning the habits and thinking patterns we had for years and require new skills we don't currently have.
Perhaps the skills we need to develop and master before trying radical change are timing, appropriate choice of goals and above all patience.
Your thoughts?

No Escape

Many of us think that there is a perfect path of choices that would successfully give us everything that we desire and beat ourselves up for once more making a poor choice that we are currently painfully receiving the results of.
This decision of ours that we have once more missed making the perfect choice of actions now colors our perceptions for making future choices and we can often lose the opportunity of a choice due to not being perfectly sure of the result.
Where does perception of perfect choice come from?
We look at successful people and automatically assume that they are successful because they made perfect planned choices from conception of idea to final result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every success has portion of it which when examined consisted of luck, timing, cooperation of others, opportunity, etc. which could not be controlled by the individual.
Perhaps then there is no escape from making mistakes as it is a natural part of being human and we are cannot have total control over all things impacting our lives and our choices. Then we could stop being afraid of making mistakes.
Your thoughts?