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Forget What You Know?

Does it ever make sense to forget what you know?

What if what you know is certain and true?

What if you simply believe it to be true, but beyond your knowledge it isn't true at all?

Sometimes learning requires the suspension of what we think is true. We need to be able to entertain a contradiction or paradox long enough to find a new perspective. Maybe we will change our mind, maybe we won't, but we give it air time. We let it breathe. We expand our world of possibilities just long enough to see if we're missing something important.

Creatives are constantly willing to forget what they think they know to learn something far more useful.

Something far more magical. Something far more brilliant. And, possibly something far more true.

Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it does not and we are free to hold to what we already believe. But without trying, without the willingness to suspend judgement for long enough to see anew -- how will we ever know?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Front Range Leadership
  

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