Saturday, November 22, 2014

A Child-Like Mindset

It is important to keep a child-like innocence and open-mindedness throughout one's life.

We all have childhood, we may still remember our imagination when we were a child, but cannot memorize such imaginable moment when we grow up. Is child-like mindset more audacious, intuitive, open and nature?

Child-like thinking is more intuitive: Sometime, a child can instinctively figure out the solution to a problem simpler than adult! They have better gut feeling or more “aha’ moments when discovering the new world, as they have more connected relationship with nature, they are open to unknowns, their intuitive mind can connect the dots boldly to create such flash of insight or convey the unconventional wisdom.

Child-like thinking can produce innovation, because they have the beginner’s mind: They enjoy experimenting and discovering; there’s no rule to limit their imagination; but when you start to be socialized to fit in the surrounding, or enter your work as a adult, you place yourself in a different mindset, you start to fear that your creativity will be seen as disruptive, infantile, you live up or down to other people's expectations, you set limit to fall into conventional wisdom, and you just become lack of the curiosity.

A child-like mind is full of imagination: As children we are conditioned to imagine, explore and create with cues from our environment and ability to discover and question it. As Einstein well put knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world. Children are not afraid of blurting out their thoughts. But adults are normally scared. Adult knows the world and set limit to stay in their comfort zone. They think for logical solution. Most of adult don't change their life radically than children. They hamper themselves to be creative, not just out of the desire to conform to a set of rules or guidelines but out of fear that they will be seen as unusual, strange, that they will not fit in.

Education effect upon child-like mindset: On one hand, education is the key to gain knowledge, and the mind equipped with knowledge can broaden one’s worldviews and sharpen one’s cognitive understanding, increase the mind’s capability and capacity to think critically and systematically; years of learning are required in order that one's contribution to change in the world be significant, and not simply incremental. However, the cons of education are perhaps that the intuitive mind is suppressed by the rational thinking process taught in school and society. The subconscious mind is suppressed to unleash the potential of breakthrough thinking which can bridge the visible and invisible, conscious and subconscious and physical and spiritual. The brain's ability to pattern and its reticular activating system (RAS) that works between conscious and unconscious conspire with the way kids need to be encouraged and seek to simplify complexity.

Still, there are creative adults in almost every profession, especially like designers, artists, poets, etc. There are probably several component that are important for being innovative, such as being  creative, proactive, knowable (multi T-shaped), experienced, strong social capital and being at the right place at the right time. It is important to release of our childlike qualities, which we all still have, takes off the shackles of making corporate presentations and actually makes your presentation, be open, be curious, be childlike, and be free to think creatively.


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