If you really want to be inspired, more than any fairy tale or supernatural legend, check out the gallery of pictures taken by the world’s greatest cameras on the Hubble Telescope. Here’s the entire collection …
I was in Sri Lanka last week conducting a series of masterclasses in a leadership retreat for Marie Stopes International and their country leaders.
In one session I was asked the following excellent question: “If you could only ever teach just one thing about ‘thinking’ what would it be?”
Based on my experience, I’m quite clear on that question and my answer was one word, “Escape!”
When I first put forward the idea of designing a selection of ‘thinking caps’ to teach thinking the strategy was that in order to use, say, Cap #2 the thinker first had to remove (or escape from) Cap#1. This is one of the most difficult skills in thinking and is indeed what defines a skilled thinker: someone who can escape from their current point-of-view.
Escape! Escape! Escape!
Recently I was asked to teach a class at Brighton Grammar how to use the Thinking Hats (based on Edward de Bono’s six hat version) so I selected two hats–the black and the green hats–and drilled the students in the skill of removing the black hat first. Once you are able to remove the hat you are wearing (usually the black hat) then you are free to select any of the other hats. But, if you cannot escape from your current hat then you are not free to use a different one.
The same strategy applies to the Universal Brain Software–CVS to BVS. If you cannot escape from your CVS then you cannot move to a BVS.
Yes, thinking skill is all about ESCAPE.
A young Hornet pilot from No. 3 Squadron flew his high-powered machine over the F1 racetrack at Melbourne’s Grand Prix. It knocked the socks off everyone! The Grand Prix shows off the most powerful car engines in the world–themselves more like fighter jets than cars–but the Hornet F/A-18’s awesome display simply puts everything into perspective.
It was a supreme display of what advanced military training can achieve with the cream of its crop. It was like, “Bring on the Jedi knight!” The RAAF pilot did the same manoeuvres they do all the time but much closer to the ground which makes it much trickier. When a Hornet does a wing turn at 500 feet the ground shoots past very quickly.
Italian Catholic educator, Don Bosco of Turin, invented what is called the ‘Salesian” method of teaching boys. Boys are notoriously difficult to teach during certain stages of their development. Eventually, they do get over it. The Salesian Method is now the fastest growing teaching strategy in the Catholic world, gradually displacing the Thomist method, which has dominated Western Thinking for 500 years.
The Salesian Method exploits positive thinking. The Thomist Strategy exploits negative thinking and was introduced into Western European thinking by Thomas Aquinas. Both strategies are useful in their own way. Don Bosco names his method after Francis de Sales who is famous for promoting the optimistic view. He said, “You can catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than a barrelfull of vinegar”.
The Right/Wrong Thomist strategy, derived from the Greeks, promotes judgmental two-box thinking–’this is right and that is wrong’–and was one of Europe’s greatest exports. It was spread around the world with missionary zeal and introduced into Australia 200 years ago by European settlers. Even today, in public and private schools, Australian children are still encouraged to ‘get the right answer’ and ‘avoid the wrong answer’. This strategy tends to produce slow judgmental thinkers who spend much of their intellectual resources arguing “I’m right and you’re wrong” instead of using design thinking to see what is possible. Parliament’s use of the Westminster system is an obvious relic of this two-box thinking strategy, also called ‘Black Hat Thinking‘.
Many Australian schools are now balancing Thomist thinking with other modes of thinking. VELS Thinking in Victoria is an escape from the traditional approach to teaching thinking in Australian schools.
Meanwhile, the success of the Salesians is an example of how the Catholics are evolving an escape from 500 years of Thomist doctrine.
Brain Facts is a 64-page primer on the brain and nervous system, published by the Society for Neuroscience. It’s an excellent starting point for a lay audience interested in neuroscience.
You can download your own copy here … (This kind of freebie is what I love about the net!)
• MEA in Tasmania - MasterClasses
• New Contact Details - Move to St Kilda
• World Thinking Congress 2010
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• MEA in Tasmania - MasterClasses
Will you join me in Tasmania? I’ll be doing a series of my new masterclassesat MEA (1-3 April) in Tasmania. It will be fun to meet with the ‘meeting’ industry and I look forward to seeing you there. The theme for 2007 is “An Island in a Sea of Change” and here’s the link: http://www.mea.org.au/tasmania/program.php
• New Contact Details - Move to St Kilda
I’ve left the leafy streets of Armadale and my new ’seachange’ is a move back to St Kilda where I was born 60 years ago. Great view overlooking St Kilda Pier and the Yacht Squadron–Tassie Ferries, cruise ships and of course St Kilda’s famous ’street life’. I once met Sir Peter Ustinov in New York where I lived for many years. When I asked him to name a favourite place in the world he chose St Kilda and described it as “that wonderful seaside raunchiness”.
My new contact details are: Voice/Fax +613.9593.8339
• World Thinking Congress 2010 (WTC 2010)
Here’s a preview–in July the School of Thinking will announce that it will be hosting the World Thinking Congress in Melbourne in 2010. It will be held in the new 5000 seat Melbourne Convention Centre due to be in operation in 2009. WTC 2010 will be the biggest convention ever held on the subject of ‘Thinking’. Exciting world class keynote speakers will be announced in June.
Best regards,
Michael
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My speaker links:
• TOPICS & FEES: http://www.newsellcoaching.com/speaker-training
• TESTIMONIALS: http://www.newsellcoaching.com/testimonials
• GOOGLE VIDEO PRESENTATIONS:
- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8711542767099301869
- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1914750376913106627
For more information please contact:
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Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson
Principal
School of Thinking
Mobile/Cell: 0401.004.658
www.schoolofthinking.org
Consequences can be very difficult to forsee. Some conseqences are beneficial, some are detrimental. But, they ARE coming! We cannot escape the consequences.
Even experienced executives, scientists and statespeople have difficulty is seeing past the short term consequences of their decisions.
Especially when teaching children to think, who have no long term perspective, it is very difficult to teach them to consider the 5, 10, 15 and 20 year consequences of their thinking, decisions and actions.
Are you aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Wikipedia says, “Unintended consequences are situations where an action results in an outcome that is not (or not only) what is intended. The unintended results may be foreseen or unforeseen, but they should be the logical or likely results of the action. For example, it is often conjectured that if the Treaty of Versailles had not imposed such harsh conditions on Germany, World War II would not have occurred. As such, war was an unintended consequence of the Treaty of Versailles … ”
Go to Wikipedia for more on this topic …
This was the title of a lecture I presented a few years ago at Monash Medical Centre to the medical staff. The title was deliberately provocative and the auditorium was filled. Doctors and medical staff work hard, they make critical decisions under relentless pressure and they use the same brain that we use.
This well-written article from the New Yorker by Jerome Groopman explores this topic:
“The errors that doctors make because of their feelings for a patient can be significant. We all want to believe that our physician likes us and is moved by our plight. Doctors, in turn, are encouraged to develop positive feelings for their patients; caring is generally held to be the cornerstone of humanistic medicine. Sometimes, however, a doctor’s impulse to protect a patient he likes or admires can adversely affect his judgment.”
I was discussing this morning, with Marty Seligman who is visiting Melbourne, the link between positive/creative thinking and altruism.
His research has shown there is a direct link. In other words, that positive, optimistic thinkers are more inclined to help others and be altruistic than pessimistic thinkers.
I suggested the parable of the Good Samaritan would be better called The Happy Samaritan. ‘Good’ is merely a judgement while ‘happy’ is an insight. Marty said, “Why don’t you write that up?”. So, I did.
Visit his site and take his Signature Strengths Test–it’s excellent.