Thinking Your Way to the Top: 10 Ways to Think Through a Thought

“The calming and healing power of a positive imagination is unleashed by constraining your focus.  Constraints drive creativity and force mindful thinking.” ~Marc Chernoff of Marc and Angel Hack Life

 When an idea or a thought leaps into your mind, do you act on it immediately? Do you pull out your ‘thinking chair’ and give yourself space to think it through thoroughly? Or, do you abandon the thought before it becomes a reality? Leadership Guru, John Maxwell, recently hosted a live workshop as a prelude to one of his courses that focuses on 10 Thinking Practices that Set Apart Highly Successful People. In this live workshop, he discussed the first of these 10 Practices: Focused Thinking.

The following points are from my notes. These notes are a departure from the way I usually write, but I am sharing them here for what they are worth:

1.  Verbalize and Visualize. (Say it often; see it often). Tell people about your thought so they can hold you accountable. If a goal is worth pursuing, it’s worth telling others. Visualize for consistency. See it often, be consistent and stay focussed.
2. Remove and Remain. (Pull away and stay away). This is about determining who is taking up space on your calendar. Are they contributing to your ROI? If not, pull away and stay away from such people. This can be interpreted in different ways: Stay away from time wasters, and from negative people, those who are not adding value to the relationship.
3. Think the Thought All the Way Through. Set aside time in the day to think the thought through. Get a ‘thinking chair’ or a special space where you can really think it through. Harry Overstreet, who John quoted, said “The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.”
4. Write, or Capture the Thought. There is a visual component to a thought so writing it down is an opportunity to capture the good and bad stuff. It spurs you to go to the next level of thinking, and see the thought more clearly. It’s always a good idea to keep a pad and paper close to your bedside to write down your thoughts when you get them in the middle of the night. Or in your purse like, my daughter does!
5. Rethink the Thought. To get clarity around the thought, give it 24 hours, then rethink it. If it’s good, it gets better after rethinking; if it’s not good, throw it away. Shake the mental tree and let the rotten thoughts fall off.
6. Table the Thought. Bring your friends to the table, share the thought with them, and ask for feedback. Ask, “How can I make this thought better?”. You know you have the right people at the table when they take the thought and make it better. Keep in mind that ‘one is too small to achieve greatness’.
7. Think the Thought Through. This is the Good to Great step. Some people are Microwave Thinkers; they don’t go deep. You must become a Crocker Pot Thinker and let the thought marinate for long.
8. Launch the Thought. Give your thought wings. Some people like the ideation stage of thinking. You must launch the thought and test it to see what it’s made off.
9. Land the Thought. This is essential. The key to the success of the thought is the landing. It has to land correctly. Ask yourself, “What do I want them to know?” “What do I want them to do?”
10. Upgrade the Thought. Don’t become complacent with just landing the thought. After a while, you should upgrade it. “When you are a focused thinker, yesterday doesn’t excite you again,” John said. For example, after many years, he upgraded one of his books – 21 Laws of Leadership – by changing 70% of its contents. He realized that he had progressed far beyond what he had written so many years ago.

He also said that 99% of thoughts never become a reality. “They just stay in the mind and become ice cubes that melt quickly, not icebergs that go very deep and take a long time to become.”

What’s the point of this post? In the course of our day-to-day lives we might not take the time to focus on our thoughts in as detailed a manner as John Maxwell articulated, but it certainly gave me some ‘food for thought’ in how I think things through in future.

It’s your turn. What are your thoughts?