Ready… Get Set… Stuck.

How many times have we got ourselves into a situation, ready to confront an issue, but end up feeling stuck? Or when faced with a complex problem, and after applying all known formulas to it, we are still stuck?

Sir Ken Robinson was quoted, “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather… We get educated out of it.”

Education has the purpose of imparting knowledge and understanding of the known world to us, allowing us to make more informed decisions as well as having the assurance of “what is right”. Yet it seems that in the course of education, our innate ability to ask “why” and “why not” has faded away and our mind has started to become guided by a certain set of beliefs about the things around us. We start to have a certain set of beliefs about learning, about leadership, about creativity, about life, etc.

PhD Carol Dweck’s Mindset talks about how we could either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. In fixed mindsets, people believe that everything about them and others are set. A successful person has always been successful all his life and a failure’s life is all about failures. And we know that there are limitations to having a fixed mindset. Creativity and growth is stifled and our perception of others has not much room for negotiation.

Break out from your set thinking patterns into growth mindsets using your personality strengths. If you are open and inquisitive, use that advantage to explore new areas of knowledge and opportunities to integrate with your existing situation. If you are naturally more questioning, use that to question the way things are and enjoy a good debate with your friends about the issues on hand. If you are more latent and more reserved in nature, use your naturally ability to listen and be moved by inspirational stories.

With a growth mindset, the best is yet to be.

Morphos coaching employs growth mindset where we believe that there can be progression wherever you are and that the best is yet to be. By becoming your mirror to allow for self-reflection, you will find that you will be unstuck. The problems and complications you are facing now, be it for yourself or for your team, will soon find a creative resolution.

Break out from your set thinking patterns, adopt growth.

King Solomon, probably the wisest king throughout history, left us with these words, “don’t eat with people who are stingy; don’t desire their delicacies. They are always thinking about how much it costs. “Eat and drink,” they say, but they don’t mean it.”

Our mind is the basic element of life, causing us to act or feel in a certain way. If one constantly think about the cost, no matter how much of an outward appearance we try to put up, it is hypocrisy at best. Yet, we know many who live life in a similar way, having their speech and actions inconsistent with their thoughts.

In our pursuit for a more wholesome life with a character worth telling our children about, we need to cultivate positive thinking habits. As the Chinese saying goes, it is easy to learn bad habits, but it is very difficult to learn good ones. Cultivating positive thinking requires toil and effort before we can reap the fruit of fulfillment and integrity.

Similar to cultivation in the field, the first step is to toil the soil, removing the rocks and the loosening the soil. In order to do that, we have to:

1) Get rid of prejudices

2) Break out from set thinking patterns

3) Challenge and control twisted thoughts

It is only with loosening the soil, which we can then go further to thought renewal processes.