‘New Normal’ Means New Ways of Thinking - Challenge is how to let go of old ideas

There is a widespread view that things cannot and will not go back to the ‘old ways’ following the pandemic crisis. There is less being said about what that means and what we must do to be ready.

The ‘what’ we will think may as yet be a large puzzle. One thing, however, already seems to be clear: the how we think will have to change.

That change will require us to let go of old ideas about how we think. Therein is the challenge for each of us.

‘The challenge is not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones’ – John Maynard Keynes

Keynes’s observation alerts us that the issue is first of all not about the ‘new’ ideas that will become part of our life, but the problem of letting go of our old ideas, our old ways of making sense of the world in which we live.

When a thinker like Keynes finds it a ‘struggle to let go of habitual modes of thought and expression which ramify into every corner of our minds’ we can be kinder and more understanding of ourselves than we might otherwise be.

We still, nevertheless, have to address how we think when the world is changing around us and making new demands on how we organise our experiences into the realities we use to guide our conduct.

The challenge is letting go of our old ideas, of our old ways of knowing and making sense of the world, so we can be open for new ways of knowing as needed.

Keynes’s observation raises the question: what prevents us from letting go of old ideas, of the ideas that may no longer be serving us well, and allow us to think afresh for our uncertain times? What makes moving on from how we currently think a challenge?

The answer is because we all have deep-down senses within us of ‘how the world works’.

These are the fundamental assumptions and the foundations of our thinking across all our personal experiences in our personal and professional lives.

These, however, are ‘silent shapers of our thinking’ and we are mostly blind to their place, nature, and role within our daily thinking activities.

This ‘blind spot’ hampers our abilities to operate effectively in a changing complex world that demands continuing development of how we think throughout adulthood.

It limits how we think to our current ways of knowing the world unless we turn to examine that ‘blind spot’.

We must release ourselves from these assumptions to be open to change, to growing how we think, and to enlarging our minds for generating the new ideas we will need for the future coming upon us.

We can do this by exploring how to uncover the sources of our beliefs about social processes relating to key aspects of our personal, professional, and public lives, including in the realms of business, politics, and society. 

In ‘The Assumptive Dive Workout’, you will learn and practice our approach to discovering and exploring the ‘silent shapers of your thinking.

This Workout provides the basis for transforming How You Think through surfacing and knowing the sources of beliefs that implicitly shape your thinking about key matters in human affairs.

Read more on our current Autumn 2020 programme https://bit.ly/36gpByz and our innovative approaches https://bit.ly/3iCvGrx