Worldview. Walking around in other people's skin.

Have you seen the NSFW music video from Childish Gambino?  Or this NSFW one by Joyner Lucas?  One shows a stimulating and violent visual worldview; the other is an audible and mental worldview (yet still visual but a stark contrast) - both provide a dichotomous perspective on today’s U.S. society.  You have to watch and listen to both songs multiple times to capture items that you missed the first time you watched.

Because of those songs and videos, your worldview has changed.  Did you feel the shift?  Do you now look at people differently?

What is your worldview?  Everyone has their lenses and filters that they see the world in. I recently had a debate with my nine-year-old daughter about color.  She asked if I saw a particular object as blue, but she said, "What if I said it was red, who would be right?”  How did I learn it was blue?  How did she learn it was red?  This debate with my nine-year-old daughter about something we perceive as fact - color - and I am realizing that her amazing superplastic mind is much more adept at changing that worldview than mine is!  Arguing the *correct* color would not convince her otherwise, especially if she were raised her whole life to realize the color she was seeing was red. 😲

We are taught to view things in the world by our friends, family, teachers, television programs, television commercials, radio, movies and even elected officials.  Each one of those sources of input provides us  with a different perspective of the world.  Think about the past seven years of your life, any seven years at any time of your lifespan and think about the change that has occurred within those time frames.  Do you recognize any paradigm shifts in your world during those periods?  I suspect you do now.  It is easier to look back and recognize the change as you look back, but when you are swimming around in the murky green water you are unable to recognize the subtle changes happening.  Those you are swimming with, none of you have that outside viewpoint of the cat looking down inside that fish bowl thinking where her next dinner is coming from.

When you go to buy a new car and have your eye on a particular year, make, and model, and even your thoughts about that particular vehicle, you begin to see them more often in the wild.  Your filters have been turned on and even your worldview, albeit subtly.  What do you think the worldview of the major car manufacturers has of the increasingly popular electric vehicle movement?  Fisker and Tesla developed sexy electric cars that people wanted.  What shifts did the traditional combustion engine car manufacturers need to make to change that viewpoint?

Although it is not a significant change in your worldview, you now see things from a different light from a different perspective just by reading this.  How do you try to see the world from the person that is next to you at a concert, or the person that's across from you at dinner, or the one behind the counter?

Consider this - you are at the local grocery store and a person hurriedly passes you, cutting in front of you in line to check out.  Is your first thought to get angry?  Get upset?  If you took pause and tried to recognize their worldview, putting on a persona that allowed you to walk around in their skin maybe you would have a more tolerant perspective?  Maybe this man, a father who looks stressed, tired and disheveled, is trying to quickly collect some food items for his family at home.  Apparently they have been visiting their injured wife/mother at the hospital.  Does this new worldview elicit a more empathetic worldview and modify your perspective?

Listen again to Joyner’s song “I'm Not a Racist” and consider that as a catalyst to change your worldview? Can you ask questions of someone without trying to force your idea on that person?  Can you accept their worldview?  If you find yourself asking questions, but starting to argue with them about their responses (read: worldview) - are you trying to force their world to match yours?  What do those arguments accomplish? 

Next scenario.  You are in a position of leadership within an organization; look at the team around you.  Are they all the same skin? Are they all the same gender? Will they have a different perspective than you when a problem needs to be solved?

Learning more about worldview gives you the opportunity to expand your mind by looking at the perspective from outside of your little bubble and to learn how other people see things by understanding their viewpoints.  It is key to recognizing if you have to have an open mind and an open heart that can embrace that different worldviews exist.  Accept that and you are prepared for change.

How do you change your worldview?  Visit places you have never been to.  Meet people on the bus, the train, and the plane and listen to them. Ask them to tell you their story. Listen with your heart. Listen with your mind. Create a persona as they tell you that story. As Atticus told Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird," you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. 

Put yourself in their skin.