One of the greatest challenges in helping people develop themselves toward achieving their goals and vision is helping them adapt their thinking. The human mind travels at such accelerated speeds, may times the process of thought-words-action gets executed at a blink of an eye. Many times, it such an automated response, many people have never modulated down the pace to a slow enough procedure to even identify what is happening.
Most of our greatest challenges lie is our plan for growth, and the major constraints for that plan are not finances, recognition, people or any other resource you could name. The major constraint is the way we think.
Clear Vision Development Group offers a very large toolbox full of tools that help us and our clients identify those areas rapidly and difinitively. Our tools are validated often and are extremely accurate. These sophisticated tools act in the same way a doctor would use diagnostic tools such as x-ray, MRI, or EKG. We never diagnose without proper analysis and data.
Manager type positions in an organization are typically filled by people who want to maintain the status quo and keep things running smoothly. Everything must be brought into compliance with certain rules and standards. This thinking is very valuable and much needed. However, when we transition to leadership, we begin to “think outside the box” and try to imagine a model outside the existing paradigm. This requires a thinking shift.
Management thinking many times will take the path of analysis in regard to HOW did we get here and HOW can we maintain? Leadership thinking will take the path of WHY. Leadership thinking questions everything can be frustrating to excellent managers who believe everything is running as it should, the system just needs adjusting and maintenance. Leadership thinking embraces the notion what got us here will never get us to a better place in the future. It will require some form of change.
Taking the thought path of “how things are going to be” or “how can we shape the future” makes some folks nervous because of the uncertainty of it all. The past is sure, it’s over and there’s no changing it. It’s as if we believe that the way things have been are the way they will always be. We know that will not happen, but we convince ourselves of it anyway.
How do we change?
1. As human beings, we each are equipped with an imagination, which allows us to visualize how we would like our future to be. Things do not have to stay the same in our thinking.
2. HOW we have done it in the past needs to be under constant review. Especially if we are not seeing the results we had envisioned. If we are too much a prisoner of our thoughts, we may actually believe there is no changing the situation, even though there is always a solution or a different way. There is much power in simply believing an answer does exist for solving a problem and it will reveal itself to you in time.
3. We need to change our thinking to match the model we want to create. What is the paradigm or set of circumstances under which you are currently operating and what changes in your thinking need to change to begin to activate the behaviors your need to help it along? You don’t think the mind is powerful? I recently heard of a man who froze to death in a railroad refrigerator car while locked inside. The temperature inside was actually 55 degrees, but he convinced himself he was going to freeze to death and that is exactly what happened. To think is to create.
4. Find books, training and other educational tools that will feed your brain the thinking it needs. Chances are, someone else out there is trying to accomplish the same thing you are. I’ll bet they’ve spoken on it or written about it. We are always a good place to start, but if you can find them and create conversations around what you are trying to do, it can work wonders.
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