With everything we do, like buying, selling, relationships, etc, I believe you will go on a journey in our mind.
1. Closed (minded.)
2. Open (minded).
3. Confident.
4. Belief.
Yes, you go through ups and downs in your emotions and thinking yourself when buying or committing to anything in your life. Understand this process from both your perspective and the people around you in either business or social. If your selling or providing a service, your clients will go through changes from open-minded to closed or confident levels of thinking before, during and after the sale.
These levels of thinking are perfectly normal and are there because of many factors and experiences of an individual.
For example; sporting teams: some people believe (love) their team A in their chosen sport and yet are closed (negative) when someone else mentions team B and Visa Versa. Yet both A and B supporters believe their sport is the best when talking to someone who is closed or does not like their sport.
The same goes for religious beliefs, political beliefs, social beliefs, dietary beliefs, movies, restaurants, holidays, and so on: yes people can be true believers in one thing and closed in others and that perfectly ok and is normal human nature.
No level is better or worse than another and people will constantly go up and down the levels depending on their experiences and circumstances.
People will generally go up by one level at a time but can come down by all 4 at once. Yes, people will generally go from closed, to open, to confident then to belief but when the journey is going down it goes down very fast as people are closing their minds either in part or in whole.
Restaurant Example:
If you were recommended to go to a restaurant that you had not been to, it would come from someone who was either at the Confident or Belief level. If you accept the suggestion of this restaurant then their thinking may have changed your thinking to be open.
If you book you would be Open-minded. Once you eat at the restaurant you will typically change to be confident and may return, or you may become a believer and recommend others or you may be closed and never return. The person who recommended the restaurant may stay a believer regardless and that is perfectly OK.
Let’s think about the 4 levels a bit more.
1. Closed (Minded).
This level of thinking is as obvious as it sounds, it is very difficult to have someone move to open and you cannot change someone’s mind to have confidence or belief as you may.
Closed (minded) people will look at the problems, do not want to change and will not listen.
In really strong cases someone may also be at the confidence level of their closed-mindedness that they actually preach the negatives about a subject.
2. Open (Minded).
Open (minded) is the most common level; we are usually more open to many things than closed or confident.
Open (minded) people are happy to listen about subjects and really don’t have an opinion of closed or confident.
Open people may or may not listen and could easily go to closed (minded) or confident with the next situation that arises.
3. Confident.
Now someone participates, if it is a sport, they watch it, if it is a product, they buy it, if it is religion, they attend the place of worship, etc.
Confident people learn more about the subject, they are heavily involved and are proud of the subject.
4. Belief.
Believers are strong, staunch and preach about the subject, they wear the subject, refuse to listen to closed (minded) people about the subject. Believers try to recommend others to the subject and will generally be very persuasive as their belief is real and so much stronger than confident.
Conclusion: People are at different levels of thinking on different subjects all the time, the 4 levels are not a personality, nor is anyone wright or wrong, but these 4 levels exist, understand them and expect them.
