You Put Yourself In a Box | In-Between the Pages

We are so responsible for creating our worst self-fulfilling prophecy. 

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are. – Epictetus

I was reading about a major oil company that got very concerned with the lack of productivity. To deal with this problem, they hired and brought in a team of psychologists to find out what differentiated the creative people from the less creative people.

The engineers were asked all kinds of questions ranging from where they grew up to what their educational backgrounds were to even what their favorite colors were.

The psychologist said that the chief differeniating factor that separated the two groups was: The creative people thought they were creative, and the less creative people didn’t think they were.

As a consequence, the creative people put themselves in a position where they could use their creativity. They allowed themselves to get into an imaginative state of mind, play with their knowledge, take a few risks, and look for lots of right answers.

Morale of the story? So you think, so you shall be. The mind is incredibly powerful and can be our greatest hurdle to overcome. If you think your creative, you’ll act that way – and if you don’t, well you won’t. Of course, where you are stuck with your mind is what you end up measuring. What gets measured, gets managed. And on it goes until you have completely lost all site of the correct way.

A couple questions along your pause points you can ask yourself to make sure your mind is in the right:

• In what ways are you creative in your endeavor? The point at which you think you are no longer creative is a red flag.
• What strengths do you have that you can apply to your issue? Sharpen the sword and think of yourself as the best at what you do. Find your inner Yoda.

If your answer is “not sure” to any of the above, then you need to be disciplined enought to stop yourself and reset. If you don’t, you will be stuck in the rut of “just the way things are” when the things can be so much more.

Thanks for reading. Hope this week goes really well. This was a short one coming back from a much needed dose of time off and the Easter holiday. I’ll get a few more in this week along the way.

Shawn