An Open Mind

One of the signs of getting older is to simply close your mind to anything new. As the years start to stack up, we tend to suffer from closed-mindedness.

A friend was telling me recently about growing up on a ranch in Oklahoma. His father raised cattle for years but one year he made the decision to start raising a new breed of cattle called a Beefmaster. In their area, most ranchers at the time raised white-faced cattle called Herefords. The Beefmaster calves were about the same size when born and were born with little difficulty and normally very healthy. The difference was that when they were taken to be sold at market they had grown at a faster rate and would weigh about 150 to 200 pounds more than other calves. One day after the sale, his Dad was telling another rancher about his success with the calves and how well he had done at the sale. The other old cowboy said, "Well, we get a better price for our Herefords." His Dad showed him the receipts that the price was the same, but that his calves were bigger. The old cowboy looked at the two receipts paused and then said, "I don't care if they do make more money - I still like the white-faced better."

This story is classic. Today the term used for such thinking is "resistance to a new paradigm" - meaning simply denial that something has shifted or changed. Sometimes because of fear or frustration or any number of things we just resist change - we close our mind.

I am fighting hard to not become an old geezer in my thinking - it is never easy to keep your mind open. I love being around people who challenge my thinking and present new ideas for me to work on.

Now if I can just find my keys, I am going to lunch. Where did I leave those keys?

Just thinking, Steve