To fulfil your potential is one of the goals of life.
If you are a leader, coach or teacher your mission (I imagine) is to help others fulfil their potential.
What stops us is often our self-limiting beliefs and our inner critical voice.
I have found that one of the best ways to over-come this internal barrier is to accelerate our thinking for a specific time period (i.e. with Blitz we start by trying to create 9 possibilities in 2 minutes).
By doing so it means that we have no time to procrastinate, over-analyse or second guess ourselves.
This acceleration of your thinking can often lead to a ‘flow’ like state where you (and your team or group) can create amazing ideas and solutions in minutes.
The concept of ‘flow’ was first developed by psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi by studying creative people at work.
According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology).
In later research, Csikszentmihalyi noticed that when people are in a flow like state they often had less activity in their prefrontal cortex. This is the area of the brain that is associated with higher cognitive processes such as working memory.
This according to Sally Adee writing in February New Scientist (http://bit.ly/AfluJg) may mean that ‘silencing self-critical thoughts might allow more automatic processes to take hold’.
This is what I believe also happens in Speed Thinking or its practical application for teams and groups called Blitz.
You are completely focused and in the moment — you just create and are not limited by your critical internal voice.
The key message?
Every individual, group or team can perform at a higher level and get closer to their potential by paradoxically just doing rather than thinking about doing.
For more specific strategies and tools please call or email.
Happy Blitzing.
ken
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