“Slow Down Your Opinions”

I recently heard an acquaintance of mine make the statement "slow down your opinions." I am not exactly sure why I loved this statement so much. I had never heard of this idea before, although my friend has probably used this statement quite regularly in her life. 

You know those times when we hear advice and wish we would have heard it way earlier in our lives so that we could have used it? I believe hearing "slow down your opinions" was one of those moments for me. This is great advice! 

It took me a few minutes to wrap my head around what "slowing down your opinions" meant , exactly. Once I began to understand it, many past life experiences began to flash through my mind. Most of them involved my past communications with parents and students while teaching full-time. 

I was sometimes the guilty party, as far as not "slowing down my opinions," but sometimes not.  

I can remember many times while finding myself in the middle of a heated conversation with a parent, I would be thinking about something extraordinary I noticed about them, even in their moment of incredible frustration and stress. 

I found this to be especially true when I met with the mother of one of the sixth-grade drummers whom I was teaching in the honor band. As this mother proceeded to share her strong negative opinion about me with me, I couldn't help but notice this mother's beautiful light blue eyes. I also recognized that her son had inherited the same crystal blue eyes. I was thinking about what a beautiful woman and mother she was. 

I tried not to smile as I did not want this mother to think I was smirking or making light of what she was saying. I admired this mother and her son, and I believed she might have liked me too if she had perhaps "slowed her opinion down" to be in the moment with me. 

I had another experience where a parent came and apologized to me and told me that she had realized she was all wrong about me. She said, "I didn't realize what you were working so hard to do for my children. I apologize for those things I assumed about you. I just wanted you to know how sorry I am for what I thought." I was thankful that this parent came to a new realization that I cared greatly about her children. We later became good friends and had many opportunities to work together professionally.

In both instances, it could have helped these two parents to slow down their opinion to allow more time for understanding, clarification, and possibly getting to know me, before they jumped to conclusions.

Now, I'm sure that we might be thinking. Well, where did these parents get their opinion of me? Well, of course, as is true in many cases, by the time a student relays what has occurred in their classrooms to their parents, they can begin to feel enraged with what has occurred. There is a slight problem with that. The parent is only allowed the opportunity to see what happened through the child's eyes. Often, it is hard to get the complete picture of a situation if we are not there to experience it firsthand.

We adults can struggle with the problem of forming opinions too quickly, but also. We can hear a portion of something that has happened and jump to conclusions. With those conclusions come opinions. Sometimes those opinions formed in a very "quick" amount of time are false and not founded upon seeing the whole picture.

Yes, forming a quick opinion can be a problem, but how do you solve it? I believe in "what you see is what you get." When we form a quick opinion and begin to collect evidence to prove our opinion of someone or something is correct, we are simultaneously overlooking factors that could have the possibility of helping us to create just the opposite opinion.

If we find ourselves in this situation and we are the one who has formed the quick opinion of someone or something, I would invite us all to step back and try to see the whole picture. We can look for evidence of the opposite opinion. We can be surprised to discover that in the end, we can see both sides and time-and-time again, we can realize that we have been too quick to form an opinion. 

We probably would have had time to form a more accurate opinion if we had slowed the process down. We are all entitled to our opinion, but the compilation of those opinions determines the kind of world we choose to exist in. Will it be a world of walls where we have "opinioned" everyone right out of our lives until we are completely isolated, or will it be a world of joy where we welcome others open-armed to live and be themselves as we embrace their strengths? It is our life, and we only get one. 

In my “slow opinion”, I believe my friend was right when she said, "slow down your opinions." Taking this action will not only empower us, but it will empower those we come in contact with also. I invite us all to be determined to give those opinions plenty of time to form so that we can live a long and resilient life filled with joy. 

-Debra R. Thomas-

From R.E.D. Notes Blogs at livelifered.com