Think Differently: A Daring With Great Benefits

Thinking differently is not just a challenge for oneself, it is a daring. Proposing new ideas, having alternative opinions and seeing the world with more shades and colors than gray lights, is quite audacious in those contexts inhabited by people who think alike. However, nothing is more relevant to our personal development than giving way to that mental renewal.

Steve Jobs said that to think differently is to dare to overthrow failure. However, nothing is so difficult than to get out of that mold, than to overcome error, criticism and those daily failures that we experience on a regular basis, and where we usually get trapped. If this is so, it is because we do not always trust our abilities, nor do we take the step to conceive ourselves differently, to stop emitting those aligned thoughts and behaviors that always place us in the same territories.

John Mighton, educator, mathematician and renowned writer, explains that it is from the age of five that children begin to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves to their peers. It is then when they conceive themselves as intelligent or not, and it is when they also begin to understand the importance of imitating behaviors, expressions and even opinions to feel integrated, so as not to be less than others.

That need, to be like the rest, is what detracts from our identity from a very early stage. Thus, in some way, we could say that there always comes a time when we are forced to take a step back to unlearn everything we have learned and reformulate ourselves. Because thinking differently requires breaking patterns to be able to generate new bits of thought with which to transform our reality.

Think different, beyond lateral thinking

When we speak of someone accustomed to thinking differently, we almost instantly visualize a person trained in lateral thinking. This mental capacity or approach, coined by Edward Bono in 1967, does not fully define those profiles capable of emitting alternative or non-aligned responses and behaviors. Actually the act of thinking differently transcends all this and includes more aspects.

While lateral thinking defines this type of thinking aimed at finding solutions that go beyond logic and that also use creativity, those who think differently have developed many more capacities. Thus, something that the well-known essayist and sociologist Malcolm Gladwell points out is that to take this step we would need three things:

• Learn to think better.
• Know where we invest our intellectual and emotional energies.
• Dare to change, transform ourselves, regularly transcend our current circumstances to improve, to continue advancing day by day.

As we can see, it is not a question therefore of limiting ourselves only to emitting ideas, answers and innovative or creative solutions. We must also be able to “innovate” in ourselves. Because those who think differently also dare to live differently, knocking down obstacles and acting like that fish that from time to time jumps to discover that the world is not made up of just water.

How to learn to think differently?

Thinking differently, as we have pointed out, implies developing other types of capacities. And as such it is not easy, it is not something that is achieved in two days or six months . It requires discipline, will and a dose of daring, to put aside the fear of “what will they say” to transform ourselves into that person we really want to be. Let’s see some keys to reflect on.

Know our mental habits

We all have a vision of what surrounds us, of what the world is. Now, on occasions we become “addicted” to the same approach, completely limiting our alternatives. We must be able to put ourselves in situations that challenge these rusty enclaves in order to develop multiple mental perspectives.

Challenge your categories, tags, and schematics

Beyond our mental habits there are also those corners of our brain where our labels live, those categories that we have formed with our experience and that often become immovable positions. We must break them too, because believe it or not, these schemes are often imposed on us from outside. Nothing is more dangerous to our freedom of thought than making use of social categories and labels.

Think in diagnostic mode

Before assuming an idea as true, let’s analyze it. Before giving truth to a rumor, let’s put it under observation. Let’s doubt everything, let’s never stay with the first option, let’s always be able to go beyond what is apparent. Let’s diagnose our reality to draw our own conclusions.

Rebellious mentality, the emotion that drives constant change

Whoever dares to think differently is not only capable of giving alternative opinions, of deciding things that others do not understand or approve of. In addition, they enjoy it, there is an immanent emotional component that pushes them to always be that voice that disagrees, that presence that challenges others but takes them into account, that figure that is also not afraid to take new paths alone.

To think differently, is to dare to live in an alternative way, is to have the key to that constant renewal where one needs to free oneself on a regular basis from what limits him, from what turns off his motivation, the desire to innovate and improve. We are therefore capable of generating that impulse, even if it costs, even if it forces us to put aside comforts and complacencies. The result will always be worth it.