By its very definition, prejudice is the tendency of mind to generalize someone or something based on preconceived and/or limited knowledge without concrete evidence to back them. Prejudice makes a person biased and limits their progress in life. It does not allow a person to go beyond their comfort zone to see the truth. To see the truth, it is utmost importance to have an open mind. So you should make an effort to overcome prejudice for your benefits and society at large.
Having prejudice is fairly natural as almost everyone is brought up with certain sets of beliefs, faith, values and culture associated with their surroundings, and that creates prejudice. The drawback of prejudice is that it does not let the new ideas, and beliefs come in from different sources and hampers the growth of both mind and life. Being open-minded opens up lots of rewarding benefits by helping us to learn and grow along with shedding our ego of all-knowing. So we should strive to be open-minded to overcome prejudice in life.
The easiest and most effective way to overcome prejudice is making an effort to broaden your horizons. Lack of knowledge is the underlying root cause of a lot of prejudice. Interacting with people having different sets of ideas and beliefs, learning the culture of certain groups, participating in regional functions of other people helps you to relate yourself with other people better and overcomes prejudice. So to overcome prejudice, you should broaden your horizon.
So, if you want to live life to the fullest, you should not let the prejudices drive your thoughts and behavior. Make an effort to overcome prejudices as soon as you become aware about them to make your life happy and enriching. Sit with your thoughts on the topic (meditation) and develop respect for others backgrounds, culture, society, moral values, beliefs, faith, and cultures. You can show respect for people by simply being polite with them and appreciating their thoughts, behaviors in a particular situation, or way of doing things even if it differs from yours.
In the end we all will grow and develop more insights and understandings which has the power to tie us to gather in wonderful ways.
Peace and Love, Jim
