In his recently published book, Your Creative Mind, Scott Cochrane explains how to disrupt your thinking, abandon your comfort zone, and develop bold new strategies. Many people have become hostage to what Jim O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny off custom.”

As Cochrane explains, “Cognitive rigidity — the inability to consider different viewpoints or innovative solutions to a problem — afflicts all of us at times to varying degrees. At its mildest, it is merely the inability to change one’s opinions about a subject, even when presented with significant evidence to the contrary. At its most extreme, it can involve a nearly sociopathic lack of empathy.”

The people to whom Voltaire refers, having once found what they believe to be “the truth,” cannot tolerate the thought that it may only be “a truth,” if indeed there is even any truth to it at all.

I am among those who believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.

Interaction with those who view their opinions as non-negotiable facts should be avoided because their minds have become mausoleums.

Cognitive rigidity is a security blanket to which they must cling desperately.