Thinking is very critical to handling problems

Many of us are hypocrites. We claim to want many things until we get to know exactly what it will take for us to acquire them. Not you, right? Well you remember George from the accounts department who wanted to get fit until he accompanied you to a workout session.

There’s also the junior executive who would like to get hired and quickly be considered as management material until he realises how much time and effort you, the manager puts into your career. And then there’s Harry, that very competitive friend who would like the same suit, car, house and so on as yours until he discovers how much it all costs.

I respect your time too much to go into the sudden avalanche of excuses many use to avoid committing to what they claim to want. Let us focus on the process behind your vision and sustained focus that keeps you a serial achiever. You apply a rarely practiced and completely effortless sport called thinking. You use your mind to develop uncommon ways of perceiving problems as the disguised opportunities that they are.

The ability to do this is woven into everybody’s DNA so pretty much anyone can tap into it but very few of us are aware of it. Even fewer put in the effort required to engage it. In case I have lost you, I am still referring to the act of thinking. Thinking is the process of engaging our minds to chart our success maps and further instruct our bodies to consistently act only in ways that deliver us to our desired outcomes. Thinking is not a skill you learn in any institution.

In fact institutions by their very nature have systems, processes, structures, and a maze of ladders for you to climb that by the time you learn how to navigate your way, all thinking has literally been drained out of you. This is not the point at which you start roaming the streets waving anti-institution placards while chanting matching slogans. Think.

There’s a difference between working in the system and working on the system. The masses work in the system. Those who go beyond going through the system’s paces are the ones that rise to the top.

They are the few that actually engage in that rarely practiced sport I mentioned earlier - thinking. Now you and I both know that institutions only have so many top positions so any system cannot have too many people running around with the ability to think without limits because it would be a nightmare to manage them.

Here’s how I help people understand this thinking business. Look at a problem, park the problem on the back burner for a moment. Now it is time to clean house. Remain calm while doing this. The problem will not burn however long you take to clean up. Now pack up all the clutter. By clutter I mean;

(i) what you have always done with such problems,

(ii) what other people normally do with them and

(iii) what others say or should be done with them

These are your conditioned beliefs, other people’s practices and yet more of other people’s conditioned beliefs on how you should handle the problem. Throw it all out. You are unlikely to solve any problem if you remain in the same frame of mind that sees it as a problem. Clean the slate of limited beliefs so that you can truly think about you-centric ways of dealing with people and situations.

Trust me on this; the problem you earlier placed on the back burner will start to look less as a problem and more as an opportunity. Taking advantage of the opportunity means making extra effort, spending extra time and even investing more time, energy and resources to get what you want.

This is the price you need to be ready to pay to get what you want. It may feel uncomfortable at the beginning but as with everything, practice makes perfect and few good things happen without some level of sacrifice.

Ms Ruligirwa-Kamara is an expert on Attitude and Human Potential Email: [email protected]