Lateral Thinking

It’s summer, people wander off exploring on vacation, so you might find it easy to imagine this scenario:

You’re climbing a mountain, breathing in deeply, filling your lungs with the crisp alpine air, enjoying the sounds of birds chirping all around…

… soaking in the views of serene sloping landscapes, when, all of a sudden, you run across a ?????????????? fallen tree that’s blocking your path.

How do you approach it? Do you just resign yourself that it’s not worth going all the way to the summit?

Or do you, instead, find a different means to get there? After all, you just ???????? the view from the top is simply ????????????????????????, and it’s worth ?????????? little bit of effort!

So, maybe there’s another footpath, or even a proper road you can bike over. Maybe you can take a chairlift, or a cable car…

?????????? you can even hitch a helicopter ride, or downright parachute to the top of the mountain… I mean, of course, if the view is ???????????? worth it all!

Now, I’ve been talking about holiday leisure time, but the same applies to your everyday work… or just your plain everyday!

How often don’t you hit a persistent snag, or seem to get stuck in a rut that you just can’t pull yourself out of?

When you feel all tangled up in your work, or bogged down with overwhelm, it’s probably because you’re focusing too much on the nitty-gritty details.

You can no longer see the forest, because you’re overrun with all the trees. So, how do you regain a full, sweeping perspective?

Here are this week’s questions to the rescue:

1. First of all, what’s your ????????? ?????? ???????? ?????????????? are you going through the motions?

(Now, at this point, I would avoid the question “why?”. It lacks precision. When you ask it, you ?????????? chunk up, and you ?????????? just as well mire yourself even more in details. So, it’s unreliable.)

2. Then, ?????? ???????? can you reach that same goal, can you achieve that purpose? (This will provide you with a multitude of alternative options.)

3. Finally, you might find it’s not immediately easy to pursue these options. So, ????????’?? ???????????????? ??????? (This will flesh out limitting beliefs or lacking skills/info that you might be missing. You might want to cycle through #1 & #2 for each of the respective options.)

Can it be ???????? simple? Well, if you find it “too” simple, maybe add 100 push-ups, as one of my mentors, the late Dr. Tad James, used to say.??

It’s a clear, straightforward structure that drives and stimulates creativity, enriching your perspective with a variety of options.

And after all, what is true Power (at your discretion), if not gaining options and the energy to seize them???

Have you already been using these lateral thinking questions? Maybe you didn’t even realize that you were…

How’s it been working out for you? Or how many ways do you plan to be using them from now on??? Share with us in the comments!