Thinking differently: a dare with great benefits

Thinking differently is not only a challenge for oneself, it is a daring. Proposing novel ideas, having alternative opinions and seeing the world with more nuances and colors than gray lights, is quite daring in those contexts inhabited by people who think in a similar way. However, nothing is more relevant to our personal development than giving way to that mental renewal.

Steve Jobs said that thinking differently is daring to overthrow failure. However, nothing is more difficult than breaking out of that mold, overcoming error, criticism and those daily failures that we experience regularly, and where we are usually trapped. If this is so, it is because we do not always trust our abilities, nor do we take the step to conceive ourselves differently, to stop emitting those aligned thoughts and behaviors that always place us in the same territories.

John Mighton, educator, mathematician and renowned writer, explains to us that It is from the age of five when children begin to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with their peers.. It is then when they conceive of themselves as intelligent or not, and it is when they also begin to understand the importance of imitating behaviors, expressions and even opinions to feel integrated, to not be less than others.

That need, to be like the rest, is what takes away the drive and brilliance of our identity very early on. Thus, in some way, we could say that there always comes a time when we are forced to take a step back to unlearn everything we have learned and reformulate ourselves. Because Thinking differently requires breaking patterns to be able to generate new bits of thought with which to transform our reality..

Think differently, beyond lateral thinking

When we talk about someone accustomed to thinking differently, we almost instantly visualize a person trained in lateral thinking.. This mental capacity or approach, coined by Edward Bono in 1967, does not fully define those profiles capable of emitting alternative or non-aligned responses and behaviors. In reality, the act of thinking differently transcends all this and includes more aspects.

While lateral thinking defines that type of thinking oriented toward finding solutions that go beyond logic and that also use creativity, those who think differently have in turn developed many more capabilities. Thus, something that the well-known essayist and sociologist Malcolm Gladwell points out to us is that to take this step we would need three things:

Learn to think better.Know where we invest our intellectual and emotional energies.Dare to change, to transform, to regularly transcend our current circumstances to improve, to continue moving forward day by day.

As we see, it is not therefore about limiting ourselves only to issuing ideas, responses and innovative or creative solutions. We must also be able to “innovate” ourselves. Because He who thinks differently also dares to live differentlyknocking down obstacles and acting like that fish that occasionally takes a leap to discover that the world is not made up of just water.

How to learn to think differently?

Thinking differently, as we have pointed out, implies developing other types of capabilities. And as such it is not simple, it is not something that can be achieved in two days or six months.. It requires discipline, will and a dose of daring, to put aside the fear of “what people will say” to transform ourselves into that person we really want to be.. Let’s look at some keys to reflect on.

Know our mental habits

We all have a vision of what surrounds us, of what the world is. Now, andSometimes we become “addicted” to the same approach, completely limiting our alternatives. We must be able to put ourselves in situations that challenge those rusty enclaves in order to develop multiple mental perspectives.

Challenge your categories, tags and schemas

Beyond our mental habits there are also those corners of our brain where our labels live, those categories that we have formed with our experience and that often become immovable positions. We must break them too, because whether we believe it or not, these schemes are often imposed on us from the outside. Nothing is more dangerous to our freedom of thought than making use of social categories and labels.

Think in diagnostic mode

Before assuming an idea as true, let’s analyze it. Before giving truth to a rumor, let’s put it under observation. Let us doubt everything, let us never stay with the first option, let us always be capable of going beyond what is apparent. Let’s diagnose our reality to draw our own conclusions.

Rebel mentality, the emotion that drives constant change

Whoever dares to think differently is not only capable of giving alternative opinions, of deciding things that others do not understand or approve. Furthermore, they enjoy it, There is an immanent emotional component that pushes them to always be that voice that disagrees.that presence that challenges others but takes them into account, that figure that is also not afraid to embark on new paths alone.

Thinking differently is daring to live in an alternative way, it is having the key to that constant renewal where one needs to regularly free oneself from that which limits one, from that which extinguishes one’s motivation, the desire to innovate and improve. Let us therefore be capable of generating that impulse, even if it costs, even if it forces us to put aside comforts and complacencies. The result will always be worth it.

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