Have you ever watched a child wrestling with a problem?
If so, you’ll know that children exercise their creative thinking skills in a very different way than adults do.
That is because children have little or no expertise in problem solving and far less experience of dealing with them!
The way children solve problems, though, can teach you a lot and this is the technique that I want you to master today.
A child approaches a
problem with an open mind and I’m pretty sure that’s probably something
you don’t habitually do. You probably approach a problem with some
preconceived notions about how it is all going to end.
Maybe you come at it
with a negative attitude even and view the whole thing as a
time-consuming annoyance. A child, on the other hand, looks at any
problem to be got around as a challenge. To them, problems are a great
mystery and are excited about finding a way to unravel them.
I expect that you
experience frustration when you can’t fix the problem right away. A
child, on the other hand, will become more intrigued and will try
different things until they find something that works. They will take
great delight in experimenting and will often get lost in their own
world as they keep working at it until they succeed.
Adults are far more
likely to give up or just ask someone else to do it for them! In fact,
children demonstrate a key component in their creative thinking skills without even being aware of doing so!
A child solves
problems with wonder, amazement and persistence. Adults want problems to
solve themselves because they do want to take the time to solve them
properly.
And this is the key
point here – one that if you can see the truth of, will unlock your
creativity more than just about anything else.
Children see
problems as a wonderland of discovery, worlds to get lost in as they
explore but adults see problems as irritating time-stealers, keeping
them from doing more pressing and important work
We adults tend to be
so worried about the time a problem will take to solve that we fail to
experience the joy of actually solving that problem!
So, here’s your
homework for today – practice flipping your attitude towards problem
solving and come at it as a child would. Cultivate a feeling of eager
expectation of discovering new and creative solutions and relish the
experience instead of becoming irritated at the time taken.
If you can master
this technique, you will find that solving problems becomes easier and
more enjoyable and ultimately, faster. Your solutions will automatically
become more creative, elevating your problem solving creative thinking skills to that of an art not an inconvenience!
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