Thinking About a Problem: Is it a Snake, a Stick or a Wall?
An African Tale:
Three blind women were walking down a path through the jungle when they heard a loud rustling ahead. They stopped; the rustling stopped. They walked around the next bend and all three of them crashed into the obstacle. Whatever it was it stretched from one side of the path to the other! The first woman screamed,
“It’s a snake! I have hold of it, but it’s so strong…”
The second woman laughed,
“Sister, I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely no snake, it’s huge and solid and still. Whatever it is we might have to try and climb over it.”
The third sister sounded triumphant,
“I think you’ve both lost your minds today! There’s nothing to worry about, it’s just a straggling vine that’s got caught across the path somehow.”
What had they encountered?
An elephant!
✯
We can laugh! We recognise the story. We look out on the world and see people looking at an obstacle/a problem and only seeing one possible way of thinking about it, where we can see others.
But what happens when we turn this on ourselves? Can you you think of an obstacle/problem, large or small that you recognise right now? Could you entertain the possibility that the limit of your current thinking means that you’re holding on to the ‘trunk’? That there may be a ‘side’ and a ‘tail’ that are as yet outside your current awareness, not to mention the whole ‘elephant’, and that you’re free to go looking for them?
What questions might this turn up:
“What would an older and wiser version of me think about this problem?”
or
“What would me in a good mood think of this?!”
Einstein said,
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.
If we look a little closer, can we notice that our thinking about a situation can change dramatically, for example depending on our mood? Have you ever gone into town and revelled in the people, the noise, the sheer life of it all: all happy thoughts, and then gone in on another day (same weather, same time, same people!) when you only noticed the crowds, the drabness, and felt miserable? The external environment was exactly the same. The only thing that was different was your mood and therefore the current story you were believing, as if this one was now somehow, externally, the only truth!
Have you ever spent time trying to work out if the way you thought about a situation yesterday was the truth of it, or if what you think about it today is?!
Maybe check in today and notice what thinking you’re having about the current moment. Ask yourself if you might see it differently (for better or worse?!) on another day in another mood. You don’t need to try and change anything, or even go after some new thinking. It can be enough to know it must be there, This is purely about noticing what’s going on.
If you want to play with these ideas further, you can get “The Cinderella Experiment” HERE It’s free.