Can we make sense of the geopolitical buffeting we are experiencing? What certainty and control over our own futures can we achieve? We discussed some practical, mainly defensive, steps in How to deal with turmoil, recently, but we also need some thinking tools to break out of a purely defensive and stuck mind frame.
We need insights
To break out of predicaments, we need insights. These are possible, even in this situation, Aha! moments that enable us to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
A recent study at the University of Tartu in Estonia, gives some clarity. We can wait for enlightenment to dawn, or, in these steps, encourage your mind to produce solutions to the intractable.
Our minds work best at different times of the day. We’ve discussed this in The Secret of Perfect Timing. Insights are more likely in the recovery phase of your day. There’s a test in the blog to help you decide if you are a morning or evening person.
What to do with an impasse
When you feel stuck, stay positive, and know you will find a way, but maybe not just now. Positive moods increase the possibility of finding a route by allowing associative thinking – joining seemingly unconnected thoughts. Getting upset about it only makes you fixate on what you can’t do.
You can end up going round and round the same thought patterns. That’s because we often rely on habitual shortcuts mentally and this can lead to a feeling of stuck. Develop curiosity about everything. It’s the entrepreneur’s superpower. Research deeper into your issue to avoid reaffirming what you think you know. This gets you away from the mental shortcuts your mind loves.
Patience is your friend
Now wait. Plenty of research tell us the mind needs time to process and make new connections. The old adage – sleep on it – is very good advice. Sleep, as well as doing the brain’s housekeeping by cleaning, filing and analysing, also allows the brain to make connections.
And in daytime, now and then, let your mind wander, as it has a similar function, but not so effective. Clear your mind of the problem and allow the mind to see and make connections you would not consciously have thought of.
Change habits
You also need to be open minded, and this can be practiced. To avoid a closed mind, change otherwise repetitive tasks or practices. Take a different route to work or home, wear different clothes to work, change your drink or lunch and where you eat it. The mind is very good at anchoring, so that one thing inevitably follows another. That leads to repetitive thinking, which you want to change. Change the first element, and the anchor is broken. Change anything, however trivial, to override habits that will only lead you back to where you were. You want to be somewhere different!
Prove yourself wrong
Now it’s time for some self-reflection. Try a science-based approach. Why do I think this? Can I prove it is wrong? This is how science experiments often are framed, so that you don’t make your viewpoint self-fulfilling. Self-reflection has been shown to precede insights.
You can try a software trick – rubber duck debugging, which is how software engineers find issues by trying to explain their coding to an inanimate object. Or, explain it to someone who doesn’t know what your problem is but can have insights from other areas that might help. Clients often talk through a problem with us to do exactly this, based on our wider business experience. Just explaining it is often enough to find the fallacy in the argument and may even bring you an insight.
Catch it when you can
Capture anything you think of, whenever it appears, even the middle of the night as the thought may be fleeting and the travails of the day might make you forget.
Don’t get too excited though, make sure you test the idea thoroughly in the light of day. And when you do test, start small, and use smarter ways and prepare to fail and try again as it’s unlikely that you have arrived at the best solution immediately. If it’s not an optimal solution, is it at least an improvement? Small, frequent changes for the better may get you out of your predicament just as fast and with less risk than one big leap.
How we can help you
We have been here before and we have all the tools and expertise to help you create plans that are agile, flexible and resilient, so that you will have strategies in place to overcome the unexpected, mitigate their effect, or avoid them. We can help you monitor the results, model any changes you want to take, and discuss with you the best ways of achieving your goals