THINKING IS IN SHORT SUPPLY

I’ve been thinking about thinking, again. Well, actually I’ve been thinking about thinking for decades. After all, that’s what NLP is all about and what the Meta-States Model is about— stepping back to look at the kind and quality of thinking that we are doing to see if the mental models that we create in our heads are actually effective. Picking up from Korzybski’s original thinking in Science and Sanity, NLP began by asking about the mental maps we create because we do not deal directly with reality. We deal with reality as filtered through our mental models. Knowing that initiated the whole exploration into the structure of experience which means exploring how we are thinking and coding things.

Why focus on thinking-about-thinking? Because of the fact that your experience can be no better than the thinking you put into it. It is the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your experiences.

Given that, how’s your thinking? How is the quality of your thinking? Obviously, poor quality thinking is, and always has been, a problem for us humans. In fact, it is humanity’s biggest problem. If you think superstitiously, or use a child’s wishful and magical thinking as your style— you will be in deep ... nonsense. That kind of inadequate, sloppy, and imprecise thinking will undermine nearly everything you attempt to do.

Ah, thinking. That is what education should be focused on— thinking clearly, precisely, and intelligently. But here’s the problem. Schools are mainly focused on the content of thinking, not the process of thinking. Test it for yourself. How many classes did you have in school on the process of thinking? Did you have any? I did not.

Now you might be thinking, “‘Thinking is not in short supply,’ I think every day. I am thinking right now. How can thinking be in short supply?” If so, then let me make sure we are on the same page about “thinking.” That’s because not everything that is called “thinking” is thinking. Many mental activities are falsely called thinking.

Thinking means taking facts and information and working them over in your mind so that you can grasp and then understand what that data means. To truly think is to take an idea inside your mind, turn it over to look at it from various positions, situate it in a context so that you understand what it means or could mean. A parrot can hear words and repeat those words, but who would say that the parrot is “thinking” as we humans think? It is parroting. It is saying words without those words really making sense or meaning within in its mind — as far as we can tell.

So merely talking and saying words and repeating things that you have heard is actually not “thinking.” And isn’t this the mental state of lots of people? They are really not thinking— they are just repeating political or religious or business bullet points. They are just repeating what they heard parents, teachers, preachers, news commentators, and others say. Thinking, real thinking, involves wrestling with ideas and concepts. Mere agreement, mere rehearsing the party line on something, can occur without thinking being involved. Real thinking actually involves a lot of mental effort— work— to grasp, comprehend, and understand.

In this, real thinking involves questioning, exploring, wondering, and intense curiosity. You can tell that your thinking is becoming real when you discover that you are expending a lot of mental effort. Thinking is actually hard work— which is why people generally avoid it. Most people seem satisfied with answers and so quit questioning.

This is one reason why I put scores and scores of funneling questions in my most recent book, Creative Solutions. In that book I used the Neuro-Semantic Precision Funnel to create quality questions that facilitate the creativity process. Creativity starts with a desired outcome. When you create a well-formed goal, you actually thereby create a context for problems. That’s because a problem is anything that gets in the way and blocks your outcome. Without an outcome, you can’t even have a problem. So the great thing about a problem is that it says you have an outcome you want that you don’t presently have.

Then, in that situation, you need a solution. This is where creativity comes in— solving a problem so you can move to your outcome. But before you jump in there, there’s another set of questions. These are designed to help you figure out the innovation process. Should you innovate the solution?

Ah, the whole outcome— problem— creative solutions — innovation process actually requires a lot of thinking! It requires an active mind. It asks that you engage in the effort of really thinking through something to well design it. In the process, the real thinking that is required is simultaneously both critical and creative. It involves the critical thinking skills of asking challenging questions and the creative thinking skills of inventing solutions.

That’s one example of real thinking. To be authentically productive in setting goals and making them happen requires high quality thinking. It requires the ability to be precise and accurate, to be critical and creative. How’s your thinking? Get a thinking quality injection— discover the Meta-Model and the Meta-States Model!

Check out — Creative Solutions (2017) Meta-States (2012) Communication Magic (2001)