Think Differently to Become a Difference Maker

"Diffferent Thinking:

1. Thinking which is unlike in style, type, form, process, quality, amount or nature; dissimilar.

2. Differing in thinking from all others, unusual.

3. Thinking which reverses basic assumptions and accepted logic or reasoning.

4. Weird thinking."

- Rolf Smith (“The 7 Levels of Change”)

When I have conversations, people often tell me that I think differently (or sometimes strangely). Or they may tell me that I used a different thought process than they expected.

This isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes they end up showing me that I used a longwinded and convoluted path to arrive at a conclusion that could have been gotten to much more easily. This has happened to me when I spoke with highly analytical or logical people.

However, this ability to think differently is one that I have always valued about myself. I have some confidence in feeling that I can probably come up with unexpected options for solving problems. If I ever get stuck in a situation, I can probably find a way out of it by thinking differently. I have never had a sense that a problem was unsolvable - although I have wondered if people were ready to implement the necessary solutions.

Sometimes my different thoughts are just ones that I haven’t had the time to properly think through or test, or perhaps they are not easily testable.

For example, a recent thought I had was that in our dreams, we are everyone in the dream because it is all happening in our minds. This is not a new thought for me – as one of my teachers in high school told me this.

Then I started thinking about it more deeply….

In our dreams, we are not only everyone in the dream. We are also everything in the dream. If there is a piece of furniture, that is me because my mind created it.

In our dreams, we feel as if we have one vantage point or one perceived self, yet in reality, we are everyone and everything in the dream. Again, if we literally created all of it in our own minds, then it is all a part of us.

Is it possible that we are everyone and everything somehow in real life, and we just have this illusion of being stuck in one vantage point – as it is in dreams?

Is it possible that we are in someone else’s dream, and so when we dream at night, it is a dream within Someone’s larger dream?

And then…. I was thinking, is it possible that the people in our dreams have their own dreams?

If we are the dreamers of someone else’s dream world, then could we also be creating dreamers of their own dream world?

Who is to say?

Different thinking doesn’t really need a definition – it is just a different way of seeing and thinking than what other people use. I’m not sure it is always creative – but it certainly can lead to creative thinking. With creative thinking, the thoughts should be novel and useful. Different thinking just involves novelty or a different quality about it and doesn’t necessarily need to be useful.

I’m sure we all have our own different ways of thinking, but today, I wonder what has contributed to different thinking in my own life. Let’s consider this more deeply.

Not Paying Enough Attention in School

Starting in 5th grade, but possibly beginning before this, I can recall being horrible at paying attention in school. Any time we got to topics such as math or history, my mind would refuse to focus. It became meaningless chatter in the background. My mind would wander endlessly. I would wonder about my classmates’ lives, if we were ever going to use any of what we learned, and I would actually worry if I would end up failing a class because I couldn’t pay attention. (Luckily, I never did.)

I believe now that a part of schooling is really designed to teach us to be normal thinkers. When the teacher says apple, you are supposed to think fruit. You aren’t supposed to wonder about how far you could throw one if you really tried. In school, you learn that when you are shown something, you immediately think about something else. And so, most of us end up with these associations in our minds.

Perhaps I am missing some of those associations because I didn’t pay enough attention, and somehow that forced me to think through things in my own way, making me a different thinker.

Having Family or Friends with a Different Culture

My family is Mexican and Panamanian, and I grew up in the US, so I grew up with some of the Latin culture, yet I went to school with kids from a wide spectrum of backgrounds. In high school, my closest friends were from a variety of different backgrounds – African American, White American, Laotian, Vietnamese, and Hungarian. Frankly, we didn’t sit around and have deep conversations about our cultural heritage, as I was still a teenager. Still, having some exposure to different backgrounds and ways of thinking from an early age helped me eventually become a different thinker.

Having Conversations with People Who Think Differently

In my experience, it’s not easy to find different thinkers. The ones I have met tend to know how to think conventionally in order to function in society. It’s as if they have their own inner mind, which is different thinking, yet in society in their normal life, they know how to think conventionally in order to work with people.

Growing up, the first different thinker I knew was my cousin Salvador – he owns a frame shop, and he is an artist. In my high school and college years, we would often have hours-long conversations that I could only describe as different. The mode of thought that he used was not like anyone else I had ever spoken with. Often, as we talked on and on for hours into the night, I would reach a point of exhaustion where I couldn’t think anymore. Then he would pull the conversation in a new direction, asking a question I had never considered, in a way that seemed to push the limits of everything I knew to be true.

To think differently, meeting different thinkers is key. Without having known Salvador (who just happened to be a cousin I grew up with), my ability to think differently would have been stifled.

Being Comfortable with Different Ways of Thinking

I was very introverted growing up, and so I spent a lot of time in my own thoughts. This was good and bad. It’s bad because we shouldn’t be too isolated from others – it’s important to share ideas with others to learn and grow.

However, being introverted ended up being a good thing for me because when I had different thoughts, I wasn’t always concerned about what anyone else would think of them. I just spent time thinking it through on my own, and I didn’t need anyone else’s approval.

I actually wasn’t sure what others would think of my thoughts, and I didn’t feel the need to share them. My thoughts were just a part of my own world when I was younger. If I had felt the need to share them and have people agree with me, then I could not have properly developed into a different thinker.

Being Willing to Consider What Seems to Be Impossible

A lot of being a different thinker is about being open to limitless possibilities. In time, I have gradually become more and more open to what many of us would probably call very strange ideas.

To me, ideas are something we should explore more deeply. Often, we want to be lazy, so we are quick to discount or discredit a different type of thought. However, those are the ones I am most curious and open to.

Different thinking is so rare that if I am exposed to it, I am highly open to it. I will not believe it without any evidence or logic, but I will deeply think through it on my own – to figure out if it is possible this could even be true. I will look for better theories that describe a phenomenon. Sometimes an idea may sound unbelievable, but if there are no better theories out there, you may have to take it seriously.

Understanding That NOT Everything Needs to Be Productive, Efficient, nor Profitable

I make efforts to always have time in my life where I don’t need to be doing anything in particular. This isn’t due to laziness. This is because to think differently, you must have time where you do not need to think in one specific way.

Everything that people do as a normal part of their life may actually get in the way of different thinking. Think about it – if we do ordinary things in ordinary ways for ordinary reasons, how likely are we to think differently?

Most people are obsessed with productivity, efficiency, or profitability – or all of these. Well, these things actually get in the way of thinking differently. If your mind meets specific objectives from morning until night, you have no time to think differently. You are forcing yourself to think conventionally through conventional problems for conventional reasons.

To think differently, take more breaks, meditate, run, be with nature, socialize, waste time for the fun of it, remember to breathe, and avoid having your life become just a daily grind.

Focus on Being Your True Self, Rather Than on Being Different

Some people do take pride in being different from others, and I think this is great. We should have our own individuality. However, if someone is too rebellious, often this can actually become predictable. As whatever you say or do, they will simply disagree and do something else. Rather than thinking differently, they are using you or the norm as a benchmark, and then they will purposely avoid doing the norm.

I believe it’s much more useful to pursue your own way of being. You do not always need to specifically avoid doing what other people do to be different. Enough people do this to where it is not very different at all, anyway. For example, how different do you think the rebellious teenager is who refuses to follow the rules – it’s quite common, isn’t it?

Rather, when you focus on being and becoming your true self as you are, there will always be something different about you than everyone else. You can allow this difference in you to shine to think more differently.

Be the Difference Maker

First, I don’t know if I can teach anyone to think differently. Most people think in normal ways, most of the time. Personally, I don’t feel particularly skilled at different thinking, but enough people have noticed this from me that I must agree – it does seem that I think differently.

Thinking or being different is not good in itself, of course. What matters is what we do with this. First, consider if it’s worth thinking more differently in your life. Do you often find yourself stuck or not knowing what to do? Different thinking may provide a path forward for you. Are you committed to resolving big, complex problems without any clear solutions? Different thinking could help.

As a human species, I sometimes feel like we are stuck, not having a good path forward to help us out of the big world problems we have created. I think that we need to value and promote our different thinkers now more than ever, as ultimately, they will be the ones who make the difference. When these difference-makers arise, the least we can do is pay attention and be open to what they have to say.

Think or Do Something Different Today

Today, work on thinking or doing something different.

If you have trouble thinking differently, you may wish to try doing something different than you normally would.

It’s actually quite easy:

• Drive a different route to work

• Start a conversation with someone new

• Read a book you normally would not read

• Get creative: write a story, draw something, make something

• Listen to a speaker who holds completely different viewpoints from your own

Doing different things can help promote different thinking, which can help you to become the difference maker.

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If you are curious about learning to think differently, I would particularly recommend reading The 7 Levels of Change: Different Thinking for Different Results by Rolf Smith.

Also, you may be interested in one of my books, Idea Hacks: Come up with 10X More Creative Ideas in 1/2 the Time