Being Open

To be emotionally available to others, we need to be open to learning and growth. 

If someone wants to practice openness, yet is fixed, closed, rigid in their thinking, they will find it hard to get started. Emotional availability is about being ‘open for business’, ready and willing to take on another person’s perspective, experience and associated emotions.

Being genuinely open to others

We all have presumptions about what it might be like to be someone else, but being emotionally available involves putting those presumptions aside and showing curiosity about what it is actually like. 

Doing this might challenge our thinking, even our worldview, but that’s a gain, not a loss. 

We demonstrate open-ness when we ask genuinely open questions ‘tell me more about that…’, and ‘what’s that like?’. 

We demonstrate open-ness when we are willing to learn from someone else, allowing them the opportunity to be the expert and not always the pupil. 

We demonstrate open-ness when we chose not to jump in and react, but make room for silence and make sure that our bodies, words and actions express acceptance.

We demonstrate open-ness when we’re willing to give of our own resources, rather than protect and preserve. 

We demonstrate open-ness when we give room, permission and encouragement for people to be more than they are currently, rather than box them in to being the them we have always known. 

TRY THIS …

Take time to reflect on yourself and your openness to others…

• How open are you?

• What might it cost you to become more open?

• What might be gained by you becoming more open?

• What are the limits of your openness?

Written by Ben Harper, our Education Lead. You can keep the conversation going with Ben on Twitter @wellbeingteach