
by Adam Grant
It consisted of 3 big parts. Rethinking personally, dance with other people's stands and how to influence people to rethink their stands, and lastly, about collective rethinking.
The book consisted of a lot of case studies, ranging from the Blackberry case study, Microsoft, NASA, the vaccine, the Palestine and Israel conflict (which I think is unnecessary since it was just a glimpse and only on the surface about two parties not knowing each other's stand), Yankee fans, etc.
Adam made good points, and sometimes I was also thrilled to know the ending.
Like when he held the debate between an AI girl and a real professional about "should we subsidize preschool child care?" I think the ending is twisted; I did not expect that even the girl was a robot.
Rethinking our opinion and our stands that sometimes prevent us from growing because we are too attached to that image of ourselves, and we forget the world is continuously changing, we might as well want and should change the way we see the world as well.
We are a work in progress. With this growth mindset, we will be more open to embracing mistakes, trial and error, and refining our "drafts" of everything.
Rewriting history after the event has passed, even if it happened so long ago, makes us better people at approaching problems like scientists, because sometimes history books can be wrong.
Make space and time to revise the draft of every work you do, to see whether you like that version of you or not yet. You have all the time and power to change it.
Empathic listening is the best way to lead, discuss, or debate with people who do not yet have that mindset. You can "dance" aside with their opinion, and offer evidence that can change their mind. Prepare the facts, 'dance', listen, to find the common ground first, and collective rethinking later.
About the pursuit of happiness, though. Yes, by rethinking, we can adjust our assumptions/opinions/stands about some things, and it could somehow make us feel better. However, for me, happiness is not something we should pursue. Adam said himself, people who pursue happiness often do not find it. So, in addition to that, I have my own perspective on this, and I use a different framework to train on similar concepts, like happiness, as a matrix of satisfaction.
Professionals who want to do better in their work.
Parents who want to do better for their children's educational and career paths.
Whoever it is in the pivotal state and wants to do or decide on a better path to take.
""Rethinking makes us a work in progress that can open to new facts and findings, and can dance with other people's opinions and make you a reasonable one to discuss and debate with""
"The story of Adam's cousin who wanted to pursue a medical career, but ended up burnt out, saying, 'I do not want to mess with the path.' Keep the job title dreams fluid; you can be more than one job description. "
Melisa Hogenboom
John Elkington