For a long time, I thought having a strong perspective meant having strong opinions.
I was wrong.
Having strong opinions is easy. People do it before breakfast. Half the internet has developed the remarkable ability to become experts on subjects they discovered eleven minutes ago. Give someone one article, two podcasts, and a comment section full of strangers agreeing with them, and suddenly they're delivering a TED Talk from the passenger seat.
Perspective is something else.
Perspective is the ability to look at the same situation from more than one angle without immediately experiencing an emotional system failure.
It requires curiosity.
It requires humility.
And unfortunately, it occasionally requires admitting that someone you find deeply irritating might have a point.
I know.
Terrible.
The older I get, the more I realize how much of my worldview has been shaped by things I didn't choose.
Where I grew up.
What I was taught.
The people around me.
The jobs I've had.
The things I've experienced.
The things I've never experienced.
The information I repeatedly consume.
All of those things quietly construct a mental window through which I look at the world.
The dangerous part is that after looking through the same window long enough, it's easy to forget that it's a window.
You start thinking it's reality itself.
Broadening your perspective doesn't mean abandoning your principles, distrusting everything you believe, or becoming one of those people who responds to every disagreement with, “Well, both sides have valid points,” including situations where one side clearly believes the Earth is shaped like a decorative throw pillow.
It simply means becoming better at recognizing that your first interpretation is not automatically the only interpretation.
I've found that the following ten habits help.
Not perfectly.
Not magically.
But enough to make me slightly less certain about things I probably shouldn't have been so certain about in the first place.
That feels like progress.
1. I Deliberately Read Things I Disagree With
This sounds obvious until you actually try it.
Most of us claim to value open-mindedness while designing our information environment like a private members-only club where every opinion has already passed a background check.
I know how easy it is.
I read writers I like.
I follow people who generally make sense to me.
Algorithms notice.
Then the internet helpfully creates an intellectual habitat where everyone appears to share roughly the same worldview.
After a while, agreement starts feeling suspiciously like truth.
That's when I know I need to disrupt the pattern.
I deliberately read thoughtful arguments from people I disagree with.
Not trolls.
Not professional outrage merchants.
Not someone whose entire intellectual contribution consists of typing “LOL cope” beneath a news article.
I look for people who can articulate the opposing position intelligently.
That matters.
If I'm going to reject an idea, I want to reject the strongest version of it, not the dumbest version available.
It's incredibly easy to defeat weak arguments.
Entire online careers have been built on doing exactly that.
Find the least intelligent representative of an opposing viewpoint, quote them, destroy their argument, and congratulate yourself on defeating an entire philosophy.
Impressive.
It's basically intellectual wrestling against a folding chair.
Reading good arguments I disagree with forces me to do something uncomfortable.
It makes me understand why another intelligent person might reach a different conclusion.
Sometimes I still disagree afterward.
Often I do.
But disagreement feels different once I understand the reasoning behind it.
The person on the other side stops looking like a malfunctioning version of me.
They become someone working with different assumptions, priorities, experiences, or information.
That's a much more useful starting point.
2. I Ask People How They Reached Their Beliefs
Most conversations about disagreement are competitions disguised as conversations.
One person talks while the other waits for oxygen.
Then the second person talks while the first prepares a counterattack.
Nobody is actually listening.
They're reloading.
I've done this more times than I'd like to admit.
Someone says something I disagree with, and immediately my brain begins producing rebuttals.
I'm physically present, but mentally I'm already writing the closing argument.
What I've learned is that one question changes the entire tone:
“How did you come to see it that way?”
That question is surprisingly powerful.
It shifts the conversation away from conclusions and toward origins.
And conclusions are only the visible part of someone's worldview.
Underneath them are experiences.
Family.
Culture.
Fear.
Success.
Failure.
Education.
Loss.
Opportunity.
Sometimes trauma.
Sometimes luck.
Sometimes one incredibly persuasive uncle who ruined Thanksgiving every year.
When I ask how someone arrived at a belief, I usually discover something I wouldn't have learned by arguing with them.
Maybe they experienced a situation I never have.
Maybe they work inside a system I've only observed from the outside.
Maybe their priorities are shaped by responsibilities I don't share.
Understanding where an idea came from doesn't mean I have to accept it.
But it gives the idea context.
And context is one of the fastest ways to widen perspective.
3. I Travel When I Can, but I Also Pay Attention When I Can't
Travel is frequently recommended as the cure for narrow thinking.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes people fly six thousand miles, stay at an international hotel chain, eat familiar food, take a picture next to a landmark, and return home having learned mainly that airport security is annoying in several languages.
Travel only broadens perspective if I actually engage with the place.
The most useful moments rarely happen at famous attractions.
They happen in grocery stores.
On public transportation.
Walking through residential neighborhoods.
Watching how families interact.
Seeing what people eat.
Noticing what businesses exist.
Listening to how people talk about work, money, government, education, relationships, or time.
Those little observations reveal how many things I considered “normal” are actually just cultural habits.
But I don't need a passport to experience this.
I can visit a neighborhood I've never explored.
Attend an event outside my usual social circle.
Eat at a restaurant where I'm unfamiliar with the cuisine.
Go to a community gathering.
Visit a museum focused on a culture or history I know little about.
Talk to people whose daily lives look nothing like mine.
Perspective expands whenever familiarity gets interrupted.
Sometimes that happens overseas.
Sometimes it happens twenty minutes from home.
4. I Read More History Because Humanity Has Already Tried Most of Our Brilliant Ideas
There is something humbling about reading history.
Every generation believes its problems are completely unprecedented.
Then you open a history book and discover people were complaining about remarkably similar things five hundred years ago.
Political division?
Old.
Economic anxiety?
Extremely old.
Young people ruining society?
Ancient.
New technology destroying attention spans?
Plato reportedly worried that writing itself would weaken human memory.
Imagine showing him TikTok.
History helps me understand that the present moment isn't floating independently in space.
Everything has a history.
Institutions have histories.
Conflicts have histories.
Cultures have histories.
Economic systems have histories.
Even ordinary social habits have histories.
When I don't know that history, the world can look deceptively simple.
I see the current situation and assume it started recently.
Then I read about what came before and realize I'm looking at chapter seventeen of a book I began reading in the middle.
History doesn't automatically provide answers.
People love saying, “History teaches us…”
History usually teaches several contradictory lessons depending on which event someone wants to use.
But history does provide depth.
It reminds me that societies evolve through complicated chains of cause and effect.
It makes simplistic explanations harder to maintain.
And that is usually a good thing.
5. I Spend Time With People Outside My Age Group
One of the easiest ways to become trapped inside a limited perspective is to spend all my time around people who are approximately my age and living through approximately the same stage of life.
Every generation develops its own assumptions.
Older people have lived through events I only know historically.
Younger people grew up inside technologies and social conditions that didn't exist when I was forming my habits.
Both perspectives expose blind spots.
Talking to someone thirty years older than me can completely change how I view career decisions, relationships, money, or time.
Talking to someone twenty years younger can reveal how rapidly cultural expectations have shifted.
Neither generation possesses the complete truth.
Despite what every generation seems determined to believe.
Older people are not automatically wise.
Young people are not automatically enlightened.
Every generation contains geniuses, fools, kind people, selfish people, visionaries, and someone complaining that music isn't as good as it used to be.
But mixing generations introduces experiences that my normal peer group cannot provide.
It stretches my timeline.
Instead of asking only, “What matters right now?”
I begin asking, “What will still matter twenty years from now?”
That question alone has saved me from taking several things too seriously.
6. I Learn Something I'm Terrible At
Nothing destroys intellectual arrogance faster than becoming a beginner.
I highly recommend it.
Learn a language.
Try playing an instrument.
Take a drawing class.
Learn coding.
Try woodworking.
Start gardening.
Attempt dancing if you're prepared to discover previously unknown limitations in your skeletal system.
When I'm competent at something, I forget how complicated learning can be.
Skills begin feeling obvious.
Then I become a beginner somewhere else and immediately regain empathy for anyone who doesn't understand what I understand.
Being bad at something reminds me that expertise contains thousands of invisible decisions.
A professional makes something look effortless because I cannot see the years of failure underneath the performance.
Beginners see the opposite.
We see every decision.
Every mistake.
Every confusing instruction.
Every moment where someone says, “It's easy,” immediately before demonstrating something that looks like sorcery.
This changes how I view other people's abilities.
It also changes how I view my own ignorance.
Instead of assuming I don't understand something because it's poorly explained or unnecessarily complicated, I become more willing to consider that I simply haven't spent enough time with it.
That tiny adjustment produces a surprising amount of humility.
7. I Ask Myself What Evidence Would Change My Mind
This question is uncomfortable.
Which is exactly why I like it.
When I strongly believe something, I occasionally ask:
“What information would make me reconsider this?”
If the answer is “nothing,” then I don't have a belief.
I have an identity.
That's dangerous.
Beliefs should be connected to evidence.
Identities defend themselves.
Once an opinion becomes part of who I think I am, changing it starts feeling like betrayal.
I no longer evaluate new information objectively.
I recruit it.
Information supporting my view gets promoted immediately.
Information challenging my view gets interrogated like it was caught crossing the border with suspicious luggage.
Most people do this.
I do it.
You probably do it.
The brain loves consistency.
It loves being correct.
Preferably simultaneously.
Asking what would change my mind creates an escape hatch.
Maybe I need new data.
Maybe I need to see a policy produce different results.
Maybe I need to experience something personally.
Maybe I need to hear a convincing argument from someone I respect.
Whatever the answer is, defining it forces me to admit that my beliefs are theoretically revisable.
They should be.
Because I'm not done learning.
At least I hope not.
8. I Consume Stories From People Whose Lives Look Nothing Like Mine
Statistics are important.
Stories are unforgettable.
Reading that millions of people experience something gives me information.
Reading one person's detailed experience gives that information a face.
Memoirs are particularly good at this.
So are documentaries.
Biographies.
Long-form interviews.
Foreign films.
Oral histories.
Even well-written fiction.
Stories allow me to temporarily borrow another person's consciousness.
I can experience a childhood in another country.
A career I've never considered.
A war I never lived through.
A disability I don't have.
A religious tradition I wasn't raised inside.
A social class I've never belonged to.
A century I never saw.
Of course, one person's story doesn't represent an entire population.
That's important.
The memoir of one immigrant isn't “the immigrant experience.”
One veteran doesn't represent every soldier.
One entrepreneur doesn't explain business.
One teacher doesn't explain education.
Humans love taking one vivid example and turning it into universal truth.
We're efficient like that.
But stories can still challenge assumptions.
They make abstract issues personal.
And once I understand the emotional reality behind an issue, I usually think about it differently.
9. I Spend Less Time Trying to Win Arguments
This might be the hardest one.
Winning feels good.
There is a specific little electrical thrill that arrives when someone stops responding because you made an excellent point.
Of course, they may have stopped responding because they got bored and went to make dinner.
But victory is victory.
The problem is that argument-winning and perspective-building are completely different activities.
Winning requires defending my position.
Learning requires exposing it.
If every conversation becomes a courtroom, I inevitably become both attorney and defendant.
I defend my worldview.
I present evidence.
I object.
I cross-examine.
Then somehow I also appoint myself judge.
Very convenient judicial system.
I've tried becoming more comfortable saying things like:
“I hadn't considered that.”
“You might be right.”
“I need to think about that.”
“I don't know.”
Those sentences sound simple.
They can feel incredibly difficult.
Especially in public.
The internet has created a strange expectation that everyone should have an immediate opinion about everything.
A major event occurs at 8:03.
By 8:11, thousands of people are confidently explaining what it means.
I increasingly admire people who can resist that pressure.
Sometimes the intelligent position is uncertainty.
Sometimes I don't know enough yet.
Sometimes there genuinely isn't enough information available.
Sometimes two competing explanations remain plausible.
That isn't weakness.
It's accuracy.
10. I Regularly Question the Story I'm Telling Myself
Perspective isn't only about understanding other people.
It's also about understanding myself.
Humans are storytelling machines.
We constantly create narratives explaining our lives.
Why something happened.
Why someone treated us a certain way.
Why we succeeded.
Why we failed.
Why a relationship ended.
Why we didn't get the job.
Why someone didn't call.
The problem is that these stories often contain a suspiciously convenient protagonist.
Me.
If something goes well, I was talented.
If something goes badly, circumstances were unfair.
If someone disagrees with me, they're unreasonable.
If I disagree with them, I'm principled.
Remarkable how consistently that works.
I've learned to question these internal narratives.
Maybe that person wasn't disrespecting me.
Maybe they were distracted.
Maybe I didn't fail because the system was rigged.
Maybe I wasn't prepared.
Maybe the person criticizing me isn't jealous.
Maybe I'm actually being annoying.
Painful possibility.
But useful.
Psychologists sometimes describe this tendency as attribution bias: we're often quick to explain our own behavior through circumstances while explaining other people's behavior through character.
I snapped because I had a stressful day.
They snapped because they're rude.
I arrived late because traffic was terrible.
They arrived late because they don't respect my time.
Perspective improves when I apply the same complexity to other people that I automatically grant myself.
Perspective Is Really About Becoming Comfortable With Complexity
The biggest change I've noticed from trying to broaden my perspective isn't that I've changed every opinion.
I haven't.
Some beliefs have become stronger.
Others have weakened.
A few have disappeared completely.
But the bigger difference is that I'm less attracted to simple explanations.
Simple explanations feel good.
One villain.
One cause.
One solution.
One obvious answer.
Reality rarely cooperates.
Most important problems contain competing values.
Policies create tradeoffs.
People have mixed motives.
Good decisions can produce bad consequences.
Bad decisions can occasionally produce good ones.
People can be intelligent and wrong.
People can be foolish and accidentally correct.
Someone can hurt me without intending to.
Someone can help me for selfish reasons.
Life stubbornly refuses to organize itself into heroes and villains.
Perspective means accepting that complexity without becoming paralyzed by it.
I can still make decisions.
I can still take positions.
I can still say something is wrong.
I just try to remain aware that my view is a view.
Not the universe issuing an official statement.
Curiosity Is Probably the Best Defense Against Becoming Insufferable
If I had to reduce all of this to one habit, it would be curiosity.
Curiosity makes disagreement interesting.
Certainty makes disagreement threatening.
Curiosity asks:
“Why do they think that?”
“What am I missing?”
“What happened before this?”
“What would this look like from somewhere else?”
“What evidence contradicts my position?”
“What don't I know yet?”
Those questions keep the mind moving.
The moment I believe I've completely figured out the world is probably the moment I should become deeply suspicious of myself.
The world is enormous.
Billions of people are living versions of reality I will never personally experience.
There are disciplines I barely understand.
Cultures I know almost nothing about.
Historical events I've never studied.
Skills I couldn't perform.
Ideas I haven't encountered.
Books I haven't read.
People I haven't met.
And yet somehow human beings regularly wake up and think:
“Yes. I understand what is happening.”
Amazing confidence.
I envy it.
Final Thoughts
Broadening my perspective hasn't made the world simpler.
It's done the opposite.
Questions multiply.
Certainty decreases.
Issues become more complicated.
People become harder to categorize.
That might sound inconvenient.
It is.
But I prefer inconvenient understanding to convenient ignorance.
Perspective doesn't require me to abandon judgment.
It requires me to make judgment more carefully.
It means reading beyond my usual sources.
Talking to people instead of merely arguing with them.
Learning history.
Becoming a beginner.
Listening across generations.
Seeking unfamiliar experiences.
Questioning my assumptions.
And occasionally entertaining the devastating possibility that I might be wrong.
That last one is particularly unpleasant.
Still, I think it's worth it.
Because the narrowest worldview is usually the one convinced it has no edges.
And the more I learn, the more obvious those edges become.
Maybe wisdom isn't knowing everything.
Maybe it's developing a better sense of how much exists outside the small portion of reality I've personally seen.
And if that's true, then broadening my perspective isn't something I eventually finish.
It's something I keep practicing.
Preferably before the algorithm convinces me that everyone already agrees with me.