Ways to Fight Traditional Thinking

 

Traditional thinking is personal enemy number one for the person who is interested in a creative personal success program. Traditional thinking freezes your mind, blocks your progress, and prevents you from developing creative power. Here are three ways to fight it:

1.    Become receptive to ideas. Welcome new ideas. Destroy these thought repellents: “Won’t work,” “Can’t be done,” “It’s useless,” and “It’s stupid.”

A very successful friend of mine who holds a major position with an insurance company said to me, “I don’t pretend to be the smartest guy in the business. But I think I am the best sponge in the insurance industry. I make it a point to soak up all the good idea I can.”

2.    Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines. Expose yourself to new restaurants, new books, new theaters, new friends, take a different route to work someday, take a different vacation this year, do something new and different this weekend.

If your work is in distribution, develop an interest in production, accounting, finance, and the other elements of business. This gives you breadth and prepares you for larger responsibilities.

3.    Be progressive, not regressive. Not “That’s the way we did it where I used to work, so we ought to do it that way here” but “how can we do it better that we did it where I used to work?” Not backward, regressive thinking but forward, progressive thinking.

Successful people, like successful business men, live with these question: “How can I improve the quality of my performance? How can I do better?”

Absolute perfection in all human undertakings from building missiles to rearing children is unattainable. This means there is endless room for improvement. Successful people know this, and they are always searching for a better way. (Note: The successful person doesn’t ask, “can I do it better?” He knows he can. So he phrases the question: “How can I do it Better?”)

Big success calls for persons who continually set higher standards for themselves and others, persons who are searching for ways to increase efficiency, to get more output at lower cost, do more with less effort. Top success is reserved for the I-can-do-it-better kind of person.

When you ask yourself, “How can I do better?” your creative power switched on and ways for doing things better suggest themselves.

Each day before you begin work, devote ten minutes to thinking “How can I do a better job today?” Ask, “What can I do today to encourage my employees?” “What special favor can I do for my customers? “ how can I increase my personal efficiency?”

This exercise is simple. But it works. Try it, and you’ll find unlimited creative ways to win greater success.