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Uh-oh! Here Comes Trouble! And Why Deliberate Trouble Making May Be Your Path To Incredible Off-the-Planet type Thinking!

Deliberate trouble-making will make you rich and famous!

Many laws and social conventions are set up to maintain the status quo. People are comfortable with the status quo. It is the known. It may be flawed, bothersome or fundamentally unsound, but at least we know what it is. The new is the unknown. The new means learning something new, thinking in a different way, maybe even (god forbid!) doing something different. The new is uncomfortable. The new is... trouble!

Edward de Bono, in his book 'New Thinking For The New Millenium', discusses how western thinking is essentially concerned with problem solving. If something goes wrong with the system, we put our great minds to work in solving the problem. As soon as it is solved, we relax back into the comfort zone. Everything is hunky dory again.

Creative thinking, or design thinking, goes beyond mere concern with fixing problems within existing systems. It seeks to design completely new,  previously unthought of systems or designs. It seeks to go beyond what is, to what could be.

There is always resistance to new ideas. Many people don't like change. They find it threatening. They like things the same way. Where resistance is just emotional, it takes the form of grumbling and maybe the odd protest, but eventually yields to the new idea if it has value.

The most dangerous enemy of the inventive, creative mind is the vested interest. To those with vested interests, people with big new ideas are Trouble with a capital T. And some of them will go to any lengths to protect their vested interests. Nowhere is this more so than in the energy industry. Those powerful companies that control the oil industry are quite ruthless and deadly in their willingness to squash and kill out new ideas and the proponents of new ideas in energy.

There is limitless FREE energy in the universe. And it has long been harnessable... vested interests keep it from you.

Being a thick-skinned trouble maker can be a rewarding profession. To begin your career as a trouble thinker, think at odds with everyone else. If the herd is going one way, you go the other.

Keep challenging the accepted way of doing things. Become the 'what if...' person in your industry. Give yourself kudos points if you are actively annoying your peers and supervisors with challenges and suggestions for ways to improve things.

Of course, if you are going to take this path, it pays to know more than anybody else about your industry. Don't be a Johnny-come-lately with ideas you don't even understand or that are so basic that they were cast aside years ago. Re-examine old ideas in the light of wide knowledge though and they may yet yield new secrets.

Contrarian thinking is very annoying to those on the end of it (unless it's funny). But if your insights are valid, your value will be recognised and people will respect you as a stand-up, speak-your-mind, out-of-the-box thinker.

For fun, you can practice deliberate trouble-making when going about your ordinary daily activities. Say or do the unexpected.

Someone asks you what time it is. Your automatic pattern is to look at your watch and tell them the time. Interrupt that habitual stimulus-response. Come up with something different. You reply with something crazy like, "Yes, your potatoes are boiling." Watch them go into a complete trance as you totally cross-wire their brains and interrupt their whole thinking pattern!

Another trouble-making question is: Why should I?

Imagine a surly teenager saying that. You are going to lose the surliness but maintain the challenge to why something should be done a certain way. We do so many things automatically because that is the way things have always been done. It doesn't mean it's the best way to do a thing. It's just the way we've done it up to this point. Can you find a better way? Will you be the one to improve it for future generations?

Another trouble making question to ask yourself is: What haven't they thought of? What is it that everybody else is so blind to, that they haven't even considered it?

You might also ask: What is achingly stupid about this? What about the way we do things now is so moronic than I can barely believe we are doing it? What sucks? What about the way we do things makes me gag on its own ineptitude and pointlessness?!

Attack! Be iconoclastic, don't worship the false idols of the tried-and-true. Eventually even the best, most thought-out systems require reinvention or renewal.

A caveat to that is don't be such a trouble-maker that you sabotage yourself before your success is fully developed. Ideas have a balancing point where they flourish, either side of which they flounder. That point is when the idea is good enough to be shared and spread amongst the people who can benefit from it.

Of course, if you are looking for perfection it's a long walk into infinity.  Far better to get it out there and into action. It'll find its feet. Once your idea has gained ground there will be plenty of status quo thinkers ready to polish it for you.

A further caveat is to be a purposeful trouble-maker. Don't use trouble-making, contrarian thinking as a way to express your own bitterness and bile. It's a tool, not a way of life. We've all met those sad, prickly people who disagree with everything you say and tear down all your ideas and thoughts. That's not for you unless you want to end up a bag lady or a tramp.

Make your challenges useful rather than bullying. Bully ideas rather than other people. Rough up ideas, bang them around, punch and pinch them and stretch them into new forms. But love people... that's the smart thing to do.

You are a genius. Your thoughts come from deep reaches of the universe, right out of the unknown. Some of your thoughts are so radical they may even scare you. But that's good.

Creativity is a wild, sometimes unruly force that moves through growth and attrition, birth and death, invention and destruction. Let your thinking be wild and unruly sometimes in your quest for the new, the better, and the wonderful...

TROUBLE...

Resources for deliberate trouble-making and contrarian thinking:

The Contrarian Manager - the case for a contrarian approach to management: "doing it differently."

Thinking Gray & Free: A Contrarian View Of Leadership - "Contrarian leaders think differently from the people around them. In particular, such leaders are able to maintain their intellectual independence by thinking gray, and enhance their intellectual creativity by thinking free," writes UCS president Steven B. Sample, in his book, A Contrarian View of Leadership.

Enchanted Mind - Paradox: "Studying paradoxes is important to the development of a creative mind. A true paradox presents a perceptual enigma to the mind. What appears to be real cannot be, and yet it is. To study paradoxes allows the mind to reach beyond what appears to be obvious. Reaching beyond the obvious is the essence of creativity." Reaching beyond the obvious is what deleberate trouble making is all about. Superb article, worth reading!

The 180 Principle - A Contrarian Approach to Problem Solving: applying a complete turn-around to your thinking to get breakthrough answers.

Give me Feedback! I'd love to hear from YOU! Email me: wily[at]wilywalnut.com

Wily Walnut is the headbrain at http://www.WilyWalnut.com, your top resource for unleashing the genius within, becoming infinitely creative, intelligent and brilliant in all that you do!

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