What is a quality mindset?
I really try to avoid division and polemics in my daily life and language. It’s a conscious decision in order to keep my perception open, and not to order things in an order they weren’t previously in. With that being said, I’d like do dig in to the concept of quality.
Quality can be seen as a dual concept, with two different parts of the concept being noted. They were introduced to me in the book “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance”. Romantic and classic quality, as they are presented in the book, are two ways of perceiving the world. Romantic quality is the kind of quality that we perceive from outside, for example aesthetics and beauty. A high romantic quality is usually something beautiful an perceived as more beautiful than the things with lower romantic quality. The classic quality is more concerned with the inside and the function of things. The higher the quality, the better and longer something functions.
— For this particular discussion, both of these qualities are relevant. The romantic quality mindset is often perceived as a very attractive mindset, as it looks and sounds good. One example of a romantic high quality mindset characteristic could be valuing speaking up about matters that are highly valued in a social context to be concerned about. The problem with doing that in a romantic kind of way is that the mindset isn’t concerned about action, but rather the perceived stance taken by other people. The issue itself isn’t important, and acting on the issue might not even be considered.
The classic quality mindset is more concerned about the functionality of the mindset itself and the results of the mindset. A person who has a high quality classic mindset would work hard for the issue presented or concerned about, and would probably care less about how the result was perceived by others. This mindset would create a highly efficient person in regards of effects. The issue with the extreme version of this kind of mindset would be the social part of having it, as there would be little concern about how the means or the actions take would be perceived.
This is one way to look at it. As stated, I don’t like duality and so, I want to expand a little further on quality.
Quality can only be measured when set in relation to something that attractive or to a goal. We can’t measure quality without knowing what kind of quality and we must have at least two of something in order to compere the quality of it. The argument can be made that if you have only one object and that object lasts a million years fulfilling it’s purpose, it’s high quality. But none of the users or observers of that object could ever make that statement, as they don’t know what to put it in relation to. Good or bad becomes utterly useless as values when you don’t have something that’s closer to good than something else.
What is quality really?
So for a mindset to be of high quality, we need to put it in relation to what the mindset is set to perform just as well as to how others perceive their own, others’ and the mindset that we’re looking at. The mindset also has to be according to your values and correlate with your feelings in order to be of high quality. At least that is if being happy and true to your personal values is one of the tasks of your mindset.
Here, we run in to a problem as the mindset you have in some ways determines what makes you happy and in some ways determine your personal values. This means that your mindset, your feelings and your personal values end up in a feedback loop. Choosing your mindset could in that sense be very hard, as would choosing your values or feelings be. That’s not the case.
I would argue that the mind controls your mindset, just as it can control behaviours, feelings and values. You can, when aware of one of these things, change them. It might not be simple, but it’s doable. So when you want to improve your mindset, what I think you need to do is to look at what you want the mindset to do for you, and how you want to communicate it. Both to yourself and others. You also need to understand what consequences your mindset will have on the rest of you and the people around you. That’s when you can create a quality mindset.
