If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always had.

We are all overly-familiar with this all-too-familiar adage. As humans, more than anything else, we are creatures of habit, so it seems that doing things the same old way is how we survive the day.

As we sort through personal problems, perennial predicaments, unexpected uncertainties, or unwritten questions with indecipherable answers, we keep looking for the correct result, the right solution, or a different outcome.

What has worked well in the past may not work as it once did. Disappointingly so, we know we need more. It could be addressing a strategy for the office, mastering a specialized skill, polishing a manuscript, or realigning our fitness routine to meet expectations or soothe our aspirations.

To get a different result, we need to look for what is not there by stepping away from the current thought process. At one time it was cleverly called ‘thinking outside the box’, but now it is simply an overused cliché. Everybody is now avoiding the ‘box’, so we need to go to a different place.

We need to begin thinking outside the thought.

In this digital age of instant, all too often, we end up clicking through any of the available search engines for answers. That, itself, has limits. Too many times, too many answers are all the same. Our reliance on contemporary technologies tends to confuse, dumb down our spirit (or curiosity), and lead us to programed or predestined results.

The answers are not always on Google.

Maybe, without even thinking about it, we are trying too hard. Stop that. Think a little less. perhaps the answer is right there; or there; or under there.

An original answer is not easy, that you know. It never has been. In fact, you know you can’t take the easy route. You’ve done that, time and again, and rarely does it provide effective results. Think, indeed, but think differently.

Look closer. At times the obvious solution is the most difficult to see.

Of course, solutions to what seems to be impossible and improbable cannot be guaranteed. Most times the only sure way of knowing is trial and error. You don’t know until you try, and you need to try and think from obscure angles, or with a different perspective.

What you end up with might not yield the correct result; it may not even be a reasonable facsimile. Hell, it might be the most miserable attempt at something you’ve ever had. But that’s good, because you’ve done it like you’ve never done before.

An original solution, how unique. Aren’t there already too many boxes?

© 2017 j.g. lewis