Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2024 11:59:19 GMT
How to use ‘possibility thinking’
Have you hit an impasse in your personal or professional life? Answer these questions to open your mind to what’s possible
by Constance de Saint Laurent & Vlad Glăveanu
psyche.co/guides/how-to-use-possibility-thinking-to-solve-problems-creatively
Creativity, or the ability to ‘think outside of the box’, is a wonderful gift. It helps you solve problems, create unique things, and live a life that is true to who you are. But it is easier said than done – for most of us, it takes time and effort not to follow the beaten path. In this Guide, we will introduce you to a mental practice that is central to creativity – possibility thinking – and propose a series of exercises you can follow that will help you get better at thinking beyond the box.
In simple terms, possibility thinking is the ability to conceive of what does not exist but could become real. Possibility thinking has only recently garnered attention from scholars, but the concept is not new. It was first proposed by Anna Craft in 1999 and she and her collaborators have since spent decades studying its development in children. As their research shows, thinking in terms of possibilities sounds simple but it is in fact a complex skill. Possibility thinking requires both imagining what is not there and creating paths to it, so that it can become a reality. For example, children might not be able to get to the Moon, but they can both imagine this possibility and create forms of pretend play to make the possibility ‘real’, at least for them.
To take another example, if we ask you to imagine that humans have three arms, you can probably do this easily enough. But if you cannot envision how this could be made true, then it will remain no more than a mental image. However, if you were to start writing about a dystopian future where humans have been genetically altered to have extra limbs, then you are entering the realm of the possible. Improbable, yes, but not impossible because now you have connected the imagined image to aspects of what is real. This is part of what makes possibility thinking so important. It helps us identify what could be made a reality and how. Thinking that it was possible to go to the Moon and envisioning that it involved something resembling a satellite launcher is what allowed humanity, ultimately, to make the trip.
When you apply possibility thinking in your daily life, it can give you a powerful sense of agency. It can help you find innovative solutions to actually do what you want to do, in one form or another.
In this Guide, we’ll take you through a series of exercises to show how you can apply possibility thinking to real-life problems you’re facing. The aim is not to find the one and only or best solution, but to map a wide range of options that exist, even if you are not aware of them at the start, and to reflect on how you could act upon them. Ultimately this will both broaden your horizon and get you thinking and doing things you would have never thought possible. In this sense, possibility thinking is about looking forward: recognising what experiences, relationships, objects and meanings may be useful to solve not only present but future problems.
The exercises that follow will involve drawing a possibility map, so make sure to have a notepad and a pen or pencil close at hand. Possibility maps can take many shapes, from a literal map to a tree of possibilities, or even lists. What all possibility maps have in common is that they can help you chart possibilities and impossibilities around an issue. You can then use your map to navigate beyond the box – and find unexpected solutions to a wide range of problems.
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Have you hit an impasse in your personal or professional life? Answer these questions to open your mind to what’s possible
by Constance de Saint Laurent & Vlad Glăveanu
psyche.co/guides/how-to-use-possibility-thinking-to-solve-problems-creatively
Creativity, or the ability to ‘think outside of the box’, is a wonderful gift. It helps you solve problems, create unique things, and live a life that is true to who you are. But it is easier said than done – for most of us, it takes time and effort not to follow the beaten path. In this Guide, we will introduce you to a mental practice that is central to creativity – possibility thinking – and propose a series of exercises you can follow that will help you get better at thinking beyond the box.
In simple terms, possibility thinking is the ability to conceive of what does not exist but could become real. Possibility thinking has only recently garnered attention from scholars, but the concept is not new. It was first proposed by Anna Craft in 1999 and she and her collaborators have since spent decades studying its development in children. As their research shows, thinking in terms of possibilities sounds simple but it is in fact a complex skill. Possibility thinking requires both imagining what is not there and creating paths to it, so that it can become a reality. For example, children might not be able to get to the Moon, but they can both imagine this possibility and create forms of pretend play to make the possibility ‘real’, at least for them.
To take another example, if we ask you to imagine that humans have three arms, you can probably do this easily enough. But if you cannot envision how this could be made true, then it will remain no more than a mental image. However, if you were to start writing about a dystopian future where humans have been genetically altered to have extra limbs, then you are entering the realm of the possible. Improbable, yes, but not impossible because now you have connected the imagined image to aspects of what is real. This is part of what makes possibility thinking so important. It helps us identify what could be made a reality and how. Thinking that it was possible to go to the Moon and envisioning that it involved something resembling a satellite launcher is what allowed humanity, ultimately, to make the trip.
When you apply possibility thinking in your daily life, it can give you a powerful sense of agency. It can help you find innovative solutions to actually do what you want to do, in one form or another.
In this Guide, we’ll take you through a series of exercises to show how you can apply possibility thinking to real-life problems you’re facing. The aim is not to find the one and only or best solution, but to map a wide range of options that exist, even if you are not aware of them at the start, and to reflect on how you could act upon them. Ultimately this will both broaden your horizon and get you thinking and doing things you would have never thought possible. In this sense, possibility thinking is about looking forward: recognising what experiences, relationships, objects and meanings may be useful to solve not only present but future problems.
The exercises that follow will involve drawing a possibility map, so make sure to have a notepad and a pen or pencil close at hand. Possibility maps can take many shapes, from a literal map to a tree of possibilities, or even lists. What all possibility maps have in common is that they can help you chart possibilities and impossibilities around an issue. You can then use your map to navigate beyond the box – and find unexpected solutions to a wide range of problems.
rest in link