You hear that to be more creative you need to think outside the box, but what is the box? It is your normal ways of thinking, and all the hidden assumptions you make. Imagine actually living in a box, and knowing the outside world only through the pictures and descriptions written on those four walls. Even the best pictures and most accurate descriptions couldn't encompass the totality of the world outside, so you would have all sorts of assumptions about the world that might not be too useful or true.
This metaphor is a great one for understanding how limited our thinking can be, and it suggests an obvious solution as well. Your thinking and assumptions are like those pictures and descriptions, and they form the "walls" of your box, limiting what you can see or know about the world. The solution? Stop looking at them and get outside the box! Here is one of the best ways to do that.
The Best Way To Get Outside The Box
Perhaps the best way to get out of your habitual thought patterns and have some new and creative ideas is to identify the assumptions you are making and challenge them. This is a powerful way to deal with everything from personal to business to artistic problems and issues. Let's look at some simple examples.
Suppose a young single man wants to buy a house, but he doesn't seem to be able to. He doesn't have the money saved for a down payment. Also, he can barely make his rent and a house will cost more per month than that. He is ready to give up when he decides to try thinking outside the box. Specifically, he remembers an article he read about identifying and challenging one's assumptions, so he tries that.
He starts by explaining to a friend why he thinks he can't buy a house. There are no more zero-down mortgages lately and he has no money saved. He doesn't even have enough extra income to save a down payment. His job doesn't pay enough to cover the costs of owning a home. "I may just have to wait a few years until I get a better job," he says. He clarifies this into the following list, even though he sees some of them not as assumptions, but as reality:
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An open mind is like an open well. It is easily contaminated by anything blowing in the wind. At least that is the problem with what many call an open mind. For example, you may have heard someone called open minded because he believes in visitors from space, bending spoons with mind power, and "remote viewing." But isn't this more a sign of a gullible mind? Let's look at a healthier definition.
Open Mind - A Definition
We all like to think that we are open minded. Here is what that means according to a couple different dictionaries: 1. Receptive to new and different ideas or the opinions of others; 2. Not narrow or conservative in thought, expression, or conduct.
That sounds reasonable, and we might want to fit those definitions. The problem comes when we take this to mean that we must entertain any idea regardless of merit, or that believing in unlikely things is a sign of open-mindedness. Then we begin to give too much credit to faulty ideas and unsupportable beliefs in the name of having an open mind.
For example, I watched a program on crop circles the other day. These are circles and other geometric shapes of flattened crops that appear in fields around the world. For years many speculated that spaceships from other planets, "energy vortexes" and other outrageous things caused them. "Experts" claimed that they could not have been caused by humans. Much of the public bought into this hype in the name of having an open mind.
Of course when several individuals and groups finally claimed responsibility, and even showed exactly how they made the designs, they were ignored by many. Some people didn't have an open mind after all -at least not open to the most likely scenario. They wanted a particular answer (space aliens) or wanted the mystery to be maintained. To this day the tricksters make their designs only to have paranormal "experts" tromp into the fields the following day and proclaim that no human could have done it.
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Have you tried positive thinking, self talk, affirmations, read books on the power of suggestion, autosuggestion, watched "the secret" or taken courses on how to materialize your goals and are still waiting for results? If so, you may be positively surprised by what you're about to learn.
Research by leading universities in the field of cognitive and behavioral science proves the existence of so called “automatic thoughts”, i.e. thoughts that come to mind involuntarily and effortlessly as an automatic response to certain stimuli. These are the thoughts that ultimately determine whether you'll fail or succeed.
The average person processes over 60'000 separate thoughts per day, of which 90% occur subconsciously. Automatic thoughts are produced by our subconscious mind and continue to execute without the involvement of our conscious mind. Think about how many things you just do, day in day out, without even consciously thinking about it. These automatic thoughts are like mini computer programs in our subconscious minds. They automatically come into action as a response to stimuli in our environment.
While many automatic thoughts are positive, some of them can create undesirable limitations in terms of your ability to evolve and progress – you could call them “success blockers”. They simply prevent you from progressing or being successful in certain areas. Automatic thoughts determine your thought patterns, attitudes and behaviors. The reactions you then observe from your environment validate your thoughts.
A key observation is that certain “automatic thoughts” are triggered by many common belief patterns (schema) with groups of people who experience the same or similar challenges and limitations.
The first step in eliminating automatic thoughts that prevent you from being successful in a certain area is to determine the thought patterns that trigger success limiting thoughts, attitudes and behaviors.
The second step is to actively change these thought patterns (cognitive modification) and introduce cognitive patterns that have been observed to trigger positive results.
But how do you do that? Ask yourself, how many people you know who despite honest attempts to change their destiny
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Attitude
Author: Steve Gillman | 
