The Sunday Mail
Never let the congestion in your street crowd your thinking and perspectives.
Today is crowded with meetings, issues, deadlines, deliveries, news, needs, people, family and other needs crying for urgent attention. In the midst of all the activity carve a space for thinking and strategic reflection. Never let yesterday and today take up all the time such that you leave no space for shaping tomorrow.
Think beyond today and see beyond the looming mountains of today. When you do not see the future, it is easy to sell the family jewels to meet the convenient needs of today. Settle it in your mind to go nowhere in your thinking life except forward. A mind in regression mode cannot be creative.
You are never too old to dream and too old to dance.
You are never too tired to think and too timid to pursue. You are never too desperate that you punch out your brains and bury your potential.
You are never too marooned to set a new goal, think your thoughts and develop a new vision of possibilities that are not yet manifest.
Never let your situations and pressures do the thinking for you. Never surrender your life to chance. Your thoughts shape your world. Your inspired thoughts shape your narratives.
Wear Thinking Hats
Your pattern of thinking determines the quality of results you get from the thinking. Edward de Bono in 1985 developed a tool for group discussions and individuals thinking called the six thinking hats. In thinking beyond today, you can use this tool to think in some structured and focused ways.
The tool involves the use of the White, Red, Yellow, Black, Green and Blue Hats. You could think of these hats as “Thinking Gears.”
These hats represent focused thinking patterns. Each of the patterns is engaged for a limited time to help generate ideas and through patterns.
You start by figuratively wearing the White Hat. Think of this as white paper with only facts.
This hat is about finding all the information, facts and data about the subject of concern to you. Record all the information that is currently available and identify the information gaps that you have. You may never have all the information you need but making decisions without information is like trying to manufacture without raw materials.
Once you have put down the information that you have or need you are ready for the next thinking gear or phase, the red hat.
The red hat represents fire and warmth. It is a thinking pattern where you explore the feelings, emotions and intuition around your thoughts. In this phase, you put forward your feelings without justification or prejudice. This is an important phase to explore what frustrates, angers or delights you.
Unless you are honest enough to express your feelings and to acknowledge them, you could just easily bottle up frustrations and concerns. After exploring the feelings that you and other people concerned hold, you can now start looking at your situation and future through the yellow hat pattern.
The yellow hat stands for the positive and optimistic view of things. It looks at the benefits in a situation. In this phase, you look at the positive view even in a negative situation or critical people. In every situation or circumstance there is something that works and something positive to think about. It is not all doom and gloom.
By using this perspective you may unveil opportunities that you were not seeing and advantages in a situation you thought was bad and bereft of opportunity.
The black hat is the pattern posture of a stern judge.
This view relates to caution and risk. In this thinking mode you ask yourself about the downside and what could go wrong. You engage in critical judgment and risk analysis. You do not want to overuse the black hat and be the devil’s advocate but you do not want to also overlook its importance.
Thinking about risk does not mean that you are negative and sceptical. It is important to look at this element critically. Nose diving into the future without reflecting on risk is not a good decision.
The black hat does not mean that you do not have faith. It symbolises putting the things that could derail you on the table and seeing the key risk factors. Risks do not go away because they have been ignored.
The green hat is your creative thinking cap. Green stands for vegetation and rich growth.
In this mode you generate new ideas and try and think of rich new possibilities. You start thinking in new boxes and asking what if questions. To aid your creative thinking ask questions like:
“If everything was possible, what would I do?” Write down all the ideas that you generate. At this stage do not judge the ideas, just generate them. Go beyond your fears and think beyond your limitations of today. In the green phase you do not imprison your mind but you liberate it.
Let your mind explore possibilities like a free bird. The phase enables you to create a dream list and to explore the universe of your opportunities.
The last thinking hat is the blue hat.
This pattern is symbolised by the sky and taking an overview perspective. It is sometimes called the process and facilitation hat. This thinking gear is about process control and providing a management structure. In this thought pattern you start thinking about thinking and putting a structure to your thoughts. You now summarise and evaluate the thoughts and information that you have generated.
Scattered thoughts will not benefit you unless they are crystallised into plan. In this thinking phase you come to informed conclusions and decisions. You now develop a plan of action with clear accountabilities.
Unless you are wiling to commit to a plan of action you have wasted thinking time. Thoughts harvested from the other hats are now structured into something that you can act on and be held accountable for.
You can use the The Six Thinking Hats tool as an individual or you can use it as a team or group.
The tool works in different settings and allows for structured thought patterns and idea generation. It allows you to think in a focused manner and explore the various dimensions of the issue of concern. This enables you to think like a person of action and then proceed to act like a person of thought because you have thought through and seen beyond today’s pressures.
Creating the future
You are not a prisoner of your past and you are not marooned in your present sea of challenges. Use your mind to think of new possibilities and to fashion your future with new thoughts. Unless you change your thinking, very little may change. Many people just respond to situations and the emergencies of today.
Reflex thinking is not a substitute for focused thinking. Those who desire greatness create the space to think and to fashion the thoughts into plans. If your present situation has driven you to your knees, this is the perfect posture for you to pray and to start thinking.
Think beyond your limitations and obstacles. Never let what looks impossible today intimidate you from believing in the possibilities that lie ahead. Never march into the future and leave your mind behind in the past. Time travel by marching ahead in your thoughts and then letting the calendar realities follow steadily.
Milton Kamwendo is a cutting-edge international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He is a strategy and innovation consultant and leadership coach. His life purpose is to inspire people to release the greatness trapped in them. He can be reached at: [email protected] and on Whatsup at: 0772422634.
