Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities.
Deepak Chopra
1946 –
Recently, a young man came to me for advice. He started off by saying he needed to make a decision on his direction in life. He had done some thinking and research and finally realized he had three choices; he wanted advice on which one he should choose.
His choices were: 1) to accept a job that didn’t offer good advancement opportunities but would enable him to support himself; 2) to enroll in college; or 3) to travel around the country for a short time, explore other areas, decide on a place to live, then get a job and settle down.
For a moment I was actually speechless. Here was a young man with no handicaps or encumbrances, yet he thought he only had three possible choices — and felt his choice would set the direction for the rest of his life. He had such a limited vision of what was possible for him.
Sadly, this type of thinking is extremely common. The biggest issue I encounter while working with people is the inability to see the possibilities available to them.
In one study from George Land and Beth Jarman’s book Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future Today, 98% of kindergarteners were classified as geniuses when it came to divergent thinking. When they tested children between the ages of 8 and 10, that percentage had fallen to 32%. By age 13-15, it dropped to 10%, and in a test of 200,000 adults, only 2% were classified as genius in divergent thinking.
It’s quite clear that we are allowing schools, family and other institutions to stifle the ability to engage in divergent thinking — a critical component for creative thought. As a result, we tend not to see the wide range of ways to solve our problems. We get stuck in limited possibility thinking.
Just like the young man who thought he only had three options, we tend to see our world in terms of very limited choices. Generally, we have far more choices than we think we do. And more often than not, our choices are not permanent.
My advice to the young man was to engage in divergent thinking: to greatly expand his list of options. And I suggested that any choice he made currently wasn’t permanent; I explained that admitting mistakes, learning from them and making adjustments was the key to successful living.
When you’re faced with a difficult decision, remember, there are many more solutions than you believe. Don’t limit your possibilities; discover them.
Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
Orison Swett Marden
1850 – 1924
Copyright © 2011 John Chancellor