Oops, while planning an email response I was distracted and clicked on an interesting link instead. Where is my discipline?
But I’m glad I did, because this is very in keeping with Critical Thinking. I happened on this interview with Jerry Wind and Colin Crook about their book, The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business. Wind and Crook present their process for impossible thinking or thoughts. The Four Minute Mile barrier is a perfect example of impossible thinking; Once that “barrier” of thought was replaced with the possible, then the Four Minute Mile was achieved by 16 other athletes. The Impossible became possible.
I think most of us agree that the greatest obstacle in transforming our personal lives, society, or even business is our own thinking. What we see and act upon is more a result of what is inside our heads than out in the world. So how we approach life and make decisions is largely due to our own thoughts and how we perceive things.
Obviously I was intrigued by the interview, especially the “Mental Models” that is mentioned. Visualization and Critical Thinking is a powerful tool once in the “imagination workshop” to develop plans, play out critical thought scenarios and obtain the best possible action to take in making decisions about anything!
The authors believe people have to obtain the skill of “making sense” with all the data available, in order to have the best outcome, in life, society and business. Below are a few excerpts from this interview I think are quite thought provoking or should I say thought shifting?
“This process starts with the recognition of the power of “mental models” but then offers practical approaches to challenges…”
Crook sites the 9/11 Flight 93 as an example of Changing our thinking to create powerful opportunities for action. Once the passengers on that flight stopped basing their cooperation (thinking) on past “hijacking” experiences, received additional information via cell phones of what was really happening, they shifted their thinking and were able to take heroic actions to stop the hyjackers plans.
Crook states, “the passengers first needed to change their hypothesis about what was going on.” He said that we are not just data driven but hypothesis driven. He now looks at the underlying hypotheses in any situation and asks himself Critical Questions:
What do I think about this?
Do I have a hypothesis to make sense of it?
Have I examined this hypothesis or have I just looked quickly and said ‘I’ve been there and done that’ and just move on.
“Don’t rush to judgment and be much more mindful about the process. Once we know that the world is shaped and filtered by our own thinking, we recognize the need to constantly test our hypotheses against the world,” Crook states.
A few other points I found interesting:
- “To challenge Your thinking, You need to interact with diverse people and be able to see the potential wisdom of weird ideas.”
- “We need to keep an open mind and approach life as a series of experiments; observe the experiments happening around us and create new ones.
- Instead of accepting the world as we think it is, we need to keep testing it to find out what it is and what works.”
Wind gives a few examples of how malleable memory and perception can be. One research studied people standing at an airport ticket counter. The ticket agent drops something; ducks behind the counter and a different person jumps up and finishes the transaction. Many of the people in line didn’t even notice the agent had changed.
Wind: “We tune out big chunks of the environment.”
Another study asks their subjects to watch a video. They are to count the number of times players with white shirts passed the basketball. A person in a black gorilla costume walks into the center of the action, beats his chest and walks off. Only 42% of the people saw that.
Wind: “More than half the subjects were so engrossed in the task at hand that they couldn’t see the gorilla. An entire gorilla, right in front of their eyes! It is very sobering to think about. Our models and attention create blinders that limit what we see.”
What gorillas are moving through Your field of vision right now that You fail to see?
Crook: “We think we see the real world, but we actually see what’s already in our own minds. If we are not aware of the power of these internal models, we may just accept what we think we see as reality. This can be limiting, and sometimes even dangerous. We become very comfortable and dependent upon our current mental models.Changing them opens us up to great uncertainty and risk. Most people are risk averse, so we tend to stay with what we are comfortable with, even if it causes increasing problems.
The concept of How to Think Not What to Think isn’t new at Mentoring For Free. It’s a constant work in progress, being aware of your thoughts, and how they affect the decisions you make, plan your day, how successful you will be in achieving your goals. You don’t have to do this alone, in fact, if \You try You most likely will end up back in the comfortable mental zone. If Your ready to stimulate Your life and business, become aware that all the Impossible Thoughts Your having are Really Possible, You can start by downloading this free ebook. We’ll help you every step of the way, for Free.
** You can find this interview in it’s entirety at: http://www.facebook.com/l/;knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1007
