The Great ‘Escape’
Posted on February 3rd, 2009 by MichaelIn a recent masterclass 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!”
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!
I was once asked to teach a class at Brighton Grammar how to use the Thinking Hats 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 idea lies behind the strategy of 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.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
You can escape from anything by letting it go, realeasing it. You need to have just a little willingness to let go of the attachment which is often emotional. So feel your feeling, cry if you must & it goes. Easy!!
February 8th, 2009 at 3:03 am
a simple enough idea it just not easey to do for most people,without
understanding potential of 10xbvs green hat scenairo, when the black hat feels just fine.
to escape from ones comfort zone [to survive or die,gognitive dissonance will be difficult decision for most]
February 6th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I would like to take this idea a little further, by suggesting that the coloured hat metaphor may be too limiting in some situations.
If a current way of thinking is not working in some way, it may be necessary to be radical, & totally ditch small variations on the current mode of thinking.
To stretch the metaphor, it may be necessary to ditch wearing a hat of any colour, and instead do someting else – e.g. transplant an eagle’s head in place of your old one – add three more different types of sense receptors on your head – so that, in imagination, you become a chimera, and act out how such a creation would think/feel/experience a problem from a unique perspective.
February 5th, 2009 at 8:52 am
this is so very true our world would be a different one if only we could stop thinking that what we think is the Truth!! other ways and other methods exist but we can’t see it if we think that what and how we think is all there is! Thank you for this so simple but so effective way of letting me know today that there are other possibilities!!