To forge a new attitude toward the events and relationships in your life, you must learn to look at them with a fresh perspective. It's a common practice during creativity seminars to give participants a bag full of materials and tools and then a problem to solve. The materials and tools are usually everyday items. You are then to use those materials in whatever ways you want to solve the problem; however, there isn't usually an obvious connection between the items and your problem. For instance maybe you have to figure out how to create a communication device using a box full of Cheerios, a hammer, tape, cotton balls, a hairbrush and a bag of marbles.
Most people have a cognitive bias called functional fixedness that causes them to see objects only in their normal context. The use of the materials and tools in their ordinary way will generally lead to no workable solutions or, at the very most, mundane ones. The really exciting solutions come from overcoming functional fixedness and using these everyday items in new ways. To see the possibilities it is helpful to take the viewpoint that nothing is what you think it is. You need to make the familiar unfamiliar.
So, for example, a box of Cheerios is no longer only a breakfast cereal. It can be broken down into cardboard and wax paper. It is a source of biomass or a source of small chips and grains. It also can be made into a sludgy mixture. Similarly, a hammer is a weight, a source of metal and wood, and it can act as mandrel, a seesaw, or a pendulum. Tape can be used to hold things together, and it also can be made into its own structural element in any desired shape. There are a number of creative ways you might use these items to fulfill the assignment.
The same dynamic can be applied to ourselves. Just as things in the material world can be transformed from their common use into something different, so too can behavior and relationships. It's difficult at first to break through preconceived notions, however once you do it, you'll find it opens the world up to you. Stop labeling things in their usual way. Mike (any student) is not a failure because his class project failed. You are not a loser because you lost your job. Make the familiar into the unfamiliar, and the result can be amazing and delightful, as opposed to dull, nonfunctional, and ordinary.
You can remove labels entirely; you can also relabel to great effect. Recent studies reinforce the idea that relabeling can change behavior. Experiments have found statistical evidence that, for instance, if you ask people to be voters, you get more voter turnout than if you simply ask people to vote. Similarly, if you ask people not to be cheaters there is less cheating than if you just ask people not to cheat. The inference is that people are more concerned with reinforcing their self-image that with their actions; thus, to change behavior, you first change self-image.
We all have ideas in our minds of what and who we our. We may have an accurate self-image, or it may be way off. Either way, it strongly colors how we respond to the world around us.
Most people have a cognitive bias called functional fixedness that causes them to see objects only in their normal context. The use of the materials and tools in their ordinary way will generally lead to no workable solutions or, at the very most, mundane ones. The really exciting solutions come from overcoming functional fixedness and using these everyday items in new ways. To see the possibilities it is helpful to take the viewpoint that nothing is what you think it is. You need to make the familiar unfamiliar.
So, for example, a box of Cheerios is no longer only a breakfast cereal. It can be broken down into cardboard and wax paper. It is a source of biomass or a source of small chips and grains. It also can be made into a sludgy mixture. Similarly, a hammer is a weight, a source of metal and wood, and it can act as mandrel, a seesaw, or a pendulum. Tape can be used to hold things together, and it also can be made into its own structural element in any desired shape. There are a number of creative ways you might use these items to fulfill the assignment.
The same dynamic can be applied to ourselves. Just as things in the material world can be transformed from their common use into something different, so too can behavior and relationships. It's difficult at first to break through preconceived notions, however once you do it, you'll find it opens the world up to you. Stop labeling things in their usual way. Mike (any student) is not a failure because his class project failed. You are not a loser because you lost your job. Make the familiar into the unfamiliar, and the result can be amazing and delightful, as opposed to dull, nonfunctional, and ordinary.
You can remove labels entirely; you can also relabel to great effect. Recent studies reinforce the idea that relabeling can change behavior. Experiments have found statistical evidence that, for instance, if you ask people to be voters, you get more voter turnout than if you simply ask people to vote. Similarly, if you ask people not to be cheaters there is less cheating than if you just ask people not to cheat. The inference is that people are more concerned with reinforcing their self-image that with their actions; thus, to change behavior, you first change self-image.
We all have ideas in our minds of what and who we our. We may have an accurate self-image, or it may be way off. Either way, it strongly colors how we respond to the world around us.
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