A Lesson in Creative Thinking From on Top of a Buoy. (The Creativity Explorer. Episode 132)

Don’t you just love it when you get to experience how your brain looks at something familiar and decides to look at it in a new way?

 

For 23 years I have been driving by a buoy next to my island where I live. I must have driven by it thousands of times.

 

And each time my brain thought: “There is a buoy to tie a boat to” (after all, that is what they are for, right…).

 

Then, a few days ago, my daughter, Maria, 9, looked at the buoy, laughed and said: “Daddy, can I sit on it?!”

 

I laughed too and replied: “Eh…?”

 

But then my mind caught up with me and I added: “Yes, of course you can!”

 

I drove close to the buoy and she jumped onto it.

 

Instantly it became a gymnastics bar!

 

Now every time I drive by that buoy I smile to myself.

 

It is now a reminder of the value of looking at familiar things with a mindset of “what else…?”

 

Pick a thing in your environment that you have looked at thousands of times, smile and ask yourself: “What else could this be?”

 

Fredrik Haren – The Creativity Explorer.

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