5 Ways To Broaden Your Perspective & Think Outside The Box

If you want to think outside the box and broaden your perspective, you came to the right place.

In this article, I’ll explain 5 ways to broaden your perspective to help you think outside the box. Broadening your perspective is important because the more perspectives you have, the better qualities ideas you’ll get on a frequent basis.

1.  Join Communities That Are Related To Your Goals

Regardless of what you’re trying to achieve, the fastest way to succeed in any field is to learn from people who are further along in the journey than you are. Joining groups and communities that are related to your goals is one of the best ways to associate with and learn from those types of people.

There are many of these types of groups and communities online. And one of the main benefits of high quality online communities is that they will allow you to find answers to questions you never considered asking and you’ll reach certain goals many times faster than you expected because of the accumulation of knowledge you get from them.

There are multiple platforms that offer online communities including:

• Facebook groups
• Slack channels
• Reddit
• Quora

Some of the highest quality communities I came across are private Facebook groups and I typically gained access to them by first buying a premium course worth at least a few hundred dollars.

2.  Attend Conferences And Seminars

Chances are, there are multiple conferences for you to choose from that are related to your goals and your industry. Ideally, you would benefit from attending at least two of those conferences a year to broaden your perspective.

Conferences and seminars give you the following advantages:

• You get to learn from speakers and guests who probably spent 10,000 more hours than you on topics where you want to excel. If there are 15 speakers at a conference, most likely, at least 2 will give you advice that is more helpful and life-changing than you expect.
• You get to network with people who have similar ambitions, goals, and interests as you.
• Conferences and seminars will let you totally immerse yourself in a topic, which will allow you to fill multiple gaps in your knowledge that you weren’t aware of
• You’ll mostly likely recalibrate your goals and go into a more beneficial direction than the direction you were going previously

The only downside is, there are certain business conferences and seminars out there that are definitely helpful to you, but you’ll have to endure high-pressure sales tactics for expensive products and services that you probably don’t want or need.

3.  Consume Books, Podcasts, And Publications About A Wide-Variety Of Topics

Every now and then, read books outside of your main niche or industry so that you’ll develop more a of a big-picture understanding of how what you do relates to the rest of the world. Doing this will allow you to subconsciously find connections between concepts that most people wouldn’t consider. Examples of topics you could learn more about include business, history, technology, social studies, innovation, and science.

4.  Try New Experiences And Activities

When you do this, you learn more about the world in general and you’ll learn skills that might in some way relate to your everyday life.

Examples of activities are:

• Going to concerts
• Going on camping trips
• Hiking on new trails
• Going to amusement parks
• Going kart racing
• Trying new restaurants

The possibilities are endless.

A great way to find out about activities in your area is to check for events on Meetup.com and eventbrite.com.

5.  Travel To New Places

Traveling to new places gives you exposure to new cultures, new ways of thinking, and new life experiences. It allows you to envision what it’s like to live in other parts of the world and how radically different your beliefs and values might be if that were the case.

Try to travel somewhere new at least a couple of times a year to interrupt your pattern of thinking and view the world from a new perspective.

Resources:

📚 “Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)” - Michael Michalko
https://amzn.to/2TReRzh

📚 "The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth" - David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, and Neil DeCarlo:
https://amzn.to/3ecLphT

📚 “Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions” - John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, & Howard Raiffa
https://amzn.to/3jW5B7C