How to Open Your Mind Up to New Opportunities

I’d like you to draw the letter Q on your forehead.

Take your dominant hand. If you’re a lefty, that would be your left hand; if you’re a righty, that would be your right hand. Now draw the letter Q on your forehead.

Go ahead. Just pause for a moment and draw the letter Q on your forehead with your dominant hand. (All this may sound silly, but I’m going somewhere with this.)

Once you’ve drawn the letter Q on your forehead, I’d like you to answer whether the tail of the Q came down over your left eye or your right eye. The tail is the little part of the Q that comes off the back.

Dr. Richard Wiseman, an author and Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), often talks about the outcomes of this exercise. If you drew the Q so that the tail came down over your left eye, it means that you’re drawing it so that someone else will be able to read it. If it comes down over your right eye, it means you’re drawing the letter Q so that you can read it.

The research says this can be an indicator of whether you’re self-focused or other-focused. There’s nothing right or wrong about self-focused or other-focused. It’s just an insight into who you are.  

If you drew the letter Q so that you could read it, you tend to come across as being the same person in different situations. This might be because your behavior is guided more by your own values than the needs of others. People like you pride themselves on being straight with others. They also expect others to be honest with them. And because of this, “they are not especially good at lying, but are better at detecting lies in others,” according to Dr. Wiseman.

If you drew the letter Q so that others can read it, you tend to be more concerned about how other people see you. You’re probably happier being the focus of other people’s attention and can easily adapt your behavior to suit the situation in which you find yourself. And you’re probably very skilled at influencing the way other people see you. Because of this, you might be better at lying, but you’re not very good at detecting lies.

Of course, a simple test like this is not going to be definitive – there are variables in the outcomes of any experiment like this. But it raises a larger point that is the foundation for your growth as a human – self-awareness is the starting point for anyone who wants to get the best from themselves.

In other words, the more you understand yourself and how others perceive you, the easier it will be for you to train yourself to accomplish everything you want in your life.

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Opening Your Mind Up to New Ideas

If the first step towards getting the best from yourself is to have self-awareness, then the second step is to open your mind up to new ideas and approaches to your life.

As we age, we find ourselves solving problems the same way over and over again. But solving a new problem with the same old solutions results in the law of diminishing returns. The outcome is that you become less productive, less effective, and more frustrated.

The solution to this is to open your mind up to new approaches to solving problems. So, as we go through our journey together, you’ll find that I’ll include exercises designed to help you train your mind to solve problems in new and interesting ways.

The exercises are designed to help you think outside the box and improve your neuroplasticity.

By thinking outside the box, you’ll be more open to new ideas and new approaches, which can help you as you evolve as a successful person.

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Let’s Unpack This

Neuroplasticity is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It was once thought to manifest only during childhood, but research has shown that many aspects of the brain can be altered even through adulthood.

With all that in mind, look at the first illustration of the glasses. There are three on the left that are half full and three on the right that are empty.

Your job is to change the pattern from what it is in the top illustration to the pattern in the illustration beneath it. But you’re only allowed to touch one glass.

In other words, by touching only one glass, you’re supposed to change the pattern from what it is in the top illustration to what it is in the bottom illustration.

Give it a shot. Spend about 30 seconds seeing if you can come up with a solution. If you come up with a solution, good for you. If you don’t come up with a solution, then you and I have a lot in common — I wasn’t able to figure this one out until it was explained to me.

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By only touching one glass of water, change the pattern so it goes from what you see above to what you see below.

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If you’re like a lot of people, you tried to solve the problem by moving the glasses around. In other words, you tried taking the half-full glass on the left and moving it around to the right. But that’s not the solution.

If you’re thinking outside the box and trying to improve your mental flexibility, then you might have explored other solutions. Ultimately, you might have come up with the answer, which is to pick up the half-full glass on the left and pour it into the second glass from the right, and then put the now-empty glass back on the left-hand side.

Again, if you didn’t come up with the solution, then we both have that in common. But if you did come up with the solution, congratulations. It shows that you already have a flexible mind and will be open to some of the new opportunities that will come your way.

About the Author: Jamie Turner is a CNN contributor, Emory University lecturer, and a Top 10-rated keynote speaker trusted by the world’s most iconic brands. As the author of Better: A Guidebook to a New and Improved You, Jamie specializes in the “Science of Peak Performance”—helping leaders eliminate friction and maximize impact.