How to make your opinion actually count for something.
Having opinions today is easy. Everyone can have one and that is unfortunately one of the things that makes them close to useless. But there are simple things we can do to increase the quality of our opinions and have them be of value.
To have a valuable opinion is difficult. It’s takes both time and effort to confront things that you likely won’t be comfortable with.
When you’ve spent deliberate time to inform yourself on a given matter’s facts, you’re starting to separate the subjectivity from reality and are getting as close to the truth as possible. This isn’t an easy process but a necessary one if we want to have a quality opinion.
Valuable opinion forming needs truth seeking
When you go through a process to get close to the truth, it’ll challenge you.
Not only will you have to fact find, verify the facts and verify the validity of the sources.
Most challenging on all, you’ll have to put your own desires to fall into a particular group’s way of thinking to one side.
It takes disciplined thinking, patience and a cool head. Opinion forming is hard work.
Overall going through this process is well worth it for the big issues that matter.
Forming a quality opinion on mass influencing topics such as 'rona, elections, technology, security, work are not so straight forward. But it’s well worth it.
It makes you into a more reasoned and rational thinker, a more empathetic person and an person of patience and poise, but as well as all this it also moves you closer to solution orientated thinking.
That I believe is the overall point of actually having an opinion, to try and do something positive and make a change with a given issue.
So here then are four ways we can improve our rational thinking and therefore our opinion forming, just a little bit the next time we face a large complicated issue.
- Approach the issue as neutrally as possible. This is easier said than done and will range in it’s emotional effect dependent on how personal the given issue is to you. However, we are seeking the truth and that means objectivity. Keeping a balanced mind will keep us getting sucked into subjectivity.
- Listen to different points of view with an open mind. Being able to take in alternate facts and view points is crucial when it comes to seeking the truth. This might be the most challenging of all the points listed, but when done properly you’ll be able to explain all the arguments of the two sides as well as anyone.
- Understand people’s underlying driving emotions. Once we understand the arguments we need to go deeper and see what are the feelings and emotions that are supporting the arguments. Yes there are facts and logic involved but often these follow an emotion driven narrative. The emotions show the raw truth behind group’s motivations.
- Look at what the larger data trends are showing. A great way to keep from getting swept up in all the emotional accusations that can occur when looking into a deep issue is to step out and just look at the overall long term trending data. Verified with a variety of reliable sources, it can inform us a lot on what is actually happening and not what people want to see happening.
Now hopefully, you don’t have to put your head in the sand, nor rush to join an angry mob.
You can take your time, zoom out, be balanced, listen to understand and then see where the data is trending.
