Think It Through

We hear that phrase a lot, “Just think it through.”  So what does it mean to ‘think something through?’  Usually we hear it when there’s a problem and we also fear that there may be some possible unintended consequences.  “If only I had thought it through, I would not be in this mess.”  “If I knew that you had any idea of doing that, I would have warned you to think it through before you decide.”  So, what do we need to think through and how do we think something through?

Thinking Something Through

The metaphor is that of a time-line, a pathway from where you are and where you want to be.  So we want to think in if—then terms.  If I do X, what is likely to happen?  Yet in answering, we are all biased for a best-case scenario or a worse-case scenario.  So go ahead, think it through with your natural bias, then think it through with the reverse.  When you do that, you can, at least, take your meta-program bias into account.

Next access on your other forecasting skills.  What do you anticipate happening?  What do you expect to happen?  What do you want to happen and how strong is that desire?  What do you fear will happen, and how strong is that fear?  Are you more comfortable with desire or fear?  The reason for these questions is that when you think something through you do so with your inner ‘programs’ for how you think.  And while these can certainly be ameliorated or even changed, they do tend to operate in you (and me) unconsciously.

Next, let’s see if we can access and detect some of your inherited meanings.  These are the most deeply unconscious meanings because we have neurologically lived them long before we understood them.  What does that mean?  It means that you and I inherited a whole set of cultural assumptions, beliefs, values, experiences, and understandings during our childhood.  We were born into a set of meanings which our ‘culture’ then ‘cultivated’ in us as a way to think, feel, speak, and act.  We were born into a set of understandings and through childhood came to live these meanings and then slowly come to understand them.  And living them meant that we accepted them as ‘what is real’ without any questioning of them.  Within each of us these meanings are deep inside and not easily accessible.  But we can access them.

Now you are ready to think in terms of what it all means to you.  “What does this problem or its goal  or how you are blocked mean to you?  What meanings do you give to each of these?  What happens to that meaning if or when X occurs?  Or if unintended consequence Y occurs?”  Here you are thinking the meanings through the process and calling out some of your inherited thinking.

The long lost hidden thoughts inside the norms of any (and every) culture are felt as what is real because you feel them, you live them.  How could they not be real?  This is what makes them nearly impossible to detect and especially to argue against.  No wonder most people are stuck in the status  quo.  It feels real to them.  So you seem crazy to suggest anything otherwise!

Now you know why old thoughts (and old thinking) is accepted without question.  As the person did not create the problem and is not even aware of the problem’s assumptions, no wonder it is so difficult top own or to take any responsibility for.  No wonder it is now so easy to “kick the problem down the road.”  In refusing responsibility, we say, “Well, I didn’t create it; I inherited it.”   Yet actually you did accept it unconsciously by living it.  The problem with this is that you dis-empowered yourself, “It’s not within my circle of control.”

What problems are you kicking down the road?  Here are some of the really ‘hard’ problems today.  They are the unrecognized problems that we take for granted, assuming it is ‘just the way things are.’  So we treat them as unchangeable ‘conditions’ of the world, not problems to be solved.

Wow!  Thinking a problem through can be quite challenging.  Thinking it through in terms of where a line of thought will take you and the consequences it will release.  Thinking it through in terms of where it started and what kind of thinking we inherited and even becoming conscious of such unconscious assumptions.  All of that is challenging to a problem-solver, but not impossible.  It just takes some highly developed skills.  That’s all.  Well, lots of practice as well!