Do You Really Think? Or Just Think That You Think?

When we started out with the Ideaz Prize we were expecting perhaps 40 ideaz to be submitted and were hoping to pass that number if we were really lucky. Today saw us receiving submission number 100, and we still have 9 days to go before we close the registration. It's so exciting to see the creativity of young people (limited to under 30's) and to discover the breadth of their thinking, and unbridled capacity for innovation.

Having an idea is really rather easy... everyone does it, and at least 20,000 times a day, and studies have suggested that some people have as many as 80,000 thoughts a day, but the snag is, for most people about 85% of their thoughts each day are a repeat of the thoughts that they had the day before. So are they really thinking? I suspect not!

Take the fellow behind me in a huge SUV following at one bumper's distance from my car. As I slowed down driving between a line of double parked cars he immediately began to sound his horn. Not a short beep either, but a prolonged and aggravating beep. Had he thought about what he was doing? I suspect not! As I pulled aside at the end of the line of cars to let him pass he proceeded to unleash his fury verbally through his partially open window. Now here's the kicker... he must have been aged around 50, was driving a luxury vehicle, was dressed smartly, but had no capacity to think beyond his own selfish needs. He wanted to go faster and took nothing else into consideration. His own passions consumed him to the point that he totally lost control of his temper and cursed at an unknown person.

I contemplated this for quite some time and wondered what kind of businessman he may be and what allowed him to become so angrily impolite and abusive to a total stranger, without hesitation and without any thought for others. A couple of thoughts came to my mind.

This person is obviously much more important than everyone else, therefore the world should move out of his way instantly
He has no respect for people that he doesn't know, regardless of who they may possibly be.
He is willing to take very high risks for very trivial reasons (where we live a lot of people carry guns, and some of the words he used would have caused some of them to react in an even more aggressive manner with desperate potential consequences).
People in big cars feel superior and secure in their big steel shell

I also wondered how he would have reacted if he would have discovered that the person in front of him (in this case me) was his son? Or his friend? Or someone of stature in society?
Or that the person in front of him had slowed down because of the potential danger to the children playing ball between the row of parked cars.

The point of sharing this little scenario (that really happened) is that here was a person evidently capable of thought, not thinking! But reacting...

And I believe that is what most of us do...

We react, but we don't think.

There are myriad responses to every situation, even if at first we don't see more than one solution to whatever problem we are working on. Thinking takes discipline, because it is a slower process than reaction. To sit down and think about a problem, a challenge, an issue, takes time and effort.

Thinking produces amazing results, firstly because it presents multiple solutions to replace the original definitive one. It creates alternatives. It allows newness to enter into the spirit of the thinker. For thoughts are limitless, eternal, and they are at our control. As we think, so we are the master of them. We can keep them, we can reveal them, we can implement them or we can simply forget them.

Thinking requires:
Effort
Time
Paper (to capture them)
A decision

So next time you are caught behind a driver that seems to be slowing down for no apparent reason, take the opportunity to think... and not just think that you think... before you beep!

Many of the submissions for the Ideaz Prize are created by thinkers.. and we just know that you are going to have a thrilling time watching as the ideaz are revealed on MTV (Lebanon) during the show that shares these stars of the future.

Ideaz Factory is an organization that specializes in Ideaz Creation