Change MakersWritten by Jonathan R Taylor
Recently, I’ve been reading a book entitled The Change Makers by Maury Klein. The book describes many of great entrepreneurs of 20th century and explains common attributes that made them successful. One particularly interesting chapter is on subject of creativity. Little has been written on subject of creativity, yet it has produced more momentous results than any other activity that humans do. Unfortunately, many people go through their entire lives without really learning to think creatively. Creative thinking is too often associated with artistic people only, but truth is that creative thinkers are needed in just about every field of endeavor. Often, problem is that as people grow up and gain more understanding, habits and routines begin to form in their lives. These routines make life so much easier by placing much of what we do on autopilot. Think about last time you drove home from work. Did you actually think about all turns necessary to get from office to home? No, because it becomes such a routine in your life. The same thing can actually happen in your career. We develop comfortable habits or routines at work that start to form boundaries around our thinking. Einstein once said that insanity can be defined as doing same thing over and over and hoping for a different result. People who get stuck in jobs that they hate often want different results, but are afraid to step out and change because of comfort of their environment. People who are comfortable in their situation don’t want to think creatively about how to change. For example, many people are desperately looking to find other alternatives to what they are doing, but when when asked to sit down and think about creative income alternatives, they quickly reply that there just isn't anything else out there that they can do.
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Last week, I wrote on subject of “creative thinking” or thinking “outside box” when it comes to solving some of life’s toughest problems. Creative problem solving however doesn’t just happen all at once. It must be fostered by establishing good thinking habits. Years ago, in his audio album The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightingale said that “we become what we think about”. In other words, if we approach world with a sour outlook, we will inevitably get same return. Much of our unhappiness can be attributed more, not by what happens but rather, how we view what happens. Negative thinking will destroy any potential for creative solutions to our biggest challenges. Think about how many times you’ve heard those famous phrases, “That will never work” or “I could never do that”. The words we use can have a dramatic impact on our mind-set. In his book Power Talking, George Walther explains that any person can learn to shape their thinking by creating habit of using positive vocabulary. This skill, he believes can be developed one word, phrase, or sentence at a time. Think about it—what if instead of saying “I failed” we used phrase “I learned”. This helps your mind focus on lessons involved when something doesn’t work out like we would have hoped. Similarly, it might be a huge benefit for us to get into habit of using word “challenge” instead of problem.
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