When jaded, cultivate the beginner’s mindset

Feeling jaded is common as we age, but adopting a 'beginner's mind' can help us approach life with openness and curiosity, fostering hope.

MUMBAI: A forty-nine-year-old male client in therapy tells me, “Sometimes I hear my own thoughts and feel uneasy because I’m already bracing for people to let me down, even when nothing has happened. I have become cynical, and hold so many pre-conceptions about life and people, including those whom I barely know. I don’t like who I am turning into.”

When jaded, cultivate the beginner’s mindset

Adulting is complicated, it comes with wisdom but also with baggage which we sometimes don’t even recognize. The feeling of being jaded is one of the risks that comes with growing older. The reality is that all of us have been through a phase or stage in our life when we have felt jaded. Whenever we experience suffering, grief, or loss of some kind, for instance, or when we have persevered for too long, we react in a jaded manner. The good news though is that we can learn to respond differently and break this pattern once we recognise it.

Learning to understand and becoming aware of how ‘being jaded’ looks like is a starting point. It’s strange, but what it means to feel ‘jaded’ hasn’t been sufficiently explored by psychologists over the years. When I think of the word jaded – it immediately brings to mind weariness. It has components of fatigue, feeling deadened and a general numbness, disappointment, disillusionment, dullness with life and people. Often, this is experienced so subtly and develops so insidiously that we may fail to notice and articulate what it is doing to us or our relationships. When we experience this state, we seem to come in our own way, making life more challenging and contributing to our own misery. Bitterness, fading hope, nihilism and detachment linger and cast a shadow on our life as we continue operating from a place of jadedness. So, spotting that feeling and accepting that we are operating from a jaded place, helps. Research indicates that naming a feeling allows us to tame the feeling. The sting attached to it, the intensity and the power that it has over us begins to shift as soon as we accept its role in our life.

What I have found useful as a strategy is the Zen concept of the ‘beginner’s mind’. Beginner’s mind is a way to view the world from a place of openness, curiosity, with a sense of wonderment that is shorn of all assumptions. As children we navigated the world with this perspective, but as we grew into our teen and adult years, hypervigilance, mistrust, and fixed ideas replaced our capacity for an open-hearted and exploratory approach. I was first introduced to this idea – in the space of meditation. Over the years as I have slowly worked on this mindset – I recognize how it allows us to see life in transition, through change and impermanence. As we begin to accept this, whether through the art of watching our breath or looking back at our life, we have a chance to shed rigidity. If we allow ourselves to adopt a mindset of ‘not knowing’ we allow for ourselves to become lighter. When we acknowledge that we don’t know everything, we can see things clearly and without falling for confirmation bias. Everyday life offers us many opportunities to cultivate a beginner’s mind—for example, taking a walk in your neighbourhood with a sense of discovery, paying attention to small details while listening to our loved ones, trying out a new hobby, or reading literature that presents diverse perspectives.

Shunryu Suzuki, a Japanese Zen Master writes in his book, ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,’ says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.” Adulthood is allowing ourselves an opportunity to cultivate this whereby we can see the world with a new lens, make room for awe, surprise as life unfolds. All acts of unexpected generosity, kindness, tenderness, that we may come across in real life or movies or books are reminders of hope and serve as antidotes to jadedness.