How Can We?!!
To create PassionFlow!™ for yourself, you must create a feeling of progress. However, if you are feeling stuck and don’t know what actions to take to create progress, try using a single, but powerful question: ‘How can we… (e.g. advance our market position by five points)?’ Putting this question before our minds will kick start creative thinking.
Accepting Possibilities
A ‘how can I/we’ question does not ask the left brain to conduct a feasibility study or deliberate on the risks involved. It does not ask whether it is possible, given the situation. It simply asks the brain to generate possibilities for bringing your goal into being.
The question ‘HOW CAN WE’ accepts that there is a way and, at the same time, acknowledges that the solution has not yet been found. It engages the mind and the heart to take a journey to explore possibilities and to find a way. When you put a challenge before yourself, the brain will not let you down.
Generating Ideas
WHY? Our brain is designed to create. Our right brain will start to generate ideas if we do not allow our left brain to shoot down each idea. Our right brain will look for connections and relationships between disparate things in search for a solution. Our right brain will ask ‘what if’ questions and intuitively use many other creative-thinking techniques to resolve the discrepancy between what we desire and what we’re at.
Including GIVENS
But that’s not all… You must also ensure that the brain doesn’t debate with itself by adding the constraint into the question. So we add the following to our question: ‘GIVEN these limits or constraints or circumstances, HOW CAN WE…?’ The brain is now building the constraint into the accepeted mental picture and it will now work with the reality, rather than fighting against it. It will focus the brain’s energy on how to create what you want, NOT on wishing it were different or trying to figure out how to change what is beyond its sphere of control.
By asking this very sophisticated question, we are teaching the brain to accept the reality of its circumstances to refuse to be a victim of circumstance, and to move beyond it to generating other solutions and paths forward. This question allows us to invest all available energy in creating our desired future!
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©2009 PassionWorks!™ Inc. The PassionWorks!™ range of employee engagement and leadership programmes is delivered under licence by Illumine Training