Page 83 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

74 TOOLS FOR THE JOB OF THINKING CREATIVELY

The names make the tools more usable. They give them handles.
We’re a sound-bite society that needs shortcuts to communicate. When
it comes to creative thinking, you now have your vocabulary.

OPEN YOUR MIND

Of course, nothing in life comes without some conditions, right?
Here’s the catch to learning these tools that make opening your mind
easier and more fruitful than ever before: You may need to open your
mind just to learn them.

As with learning almost anything as an adult, it means you must let
go of some of your existing beliefs and practices—that is, those beliefs
and practices that may run counter to the new material you’re learning.

Then again, since we demonstrated earlier that in many ways
you’ve been an unconscious thinker for most of your life, maybe it
shouldn’t be so hard to learn these different ways of thinking after all.
Changing old thinking habits and thought patterns is an entirely
different thing. It will require some discipline to use the new tools reg-
ularly, to keep you out of your old ruts and to make you more at home
in new, more bountiful grooves of thinking. To that end, we’ll provide
some guidance at the end of Part III to help you integrate these new
methods into your life for maximum long-term results.
As I mentioned earlier in this book, many of the thought methods
that are used here are things you already do on your best days. You just
do them less consciously now than you will after you learn about them
in the next few chapters. As I also mentioned earlier, this section is less
of a learning exercise than it is a “recognizing” experience.
So sit back and open your mind. The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy
tools are the meat of this book. Eat it up. Digest it. And let it help you
satisfy your hunger for creative thinking for the rest of your life.