Rethinking “thinking” for the New Year

I listened to a podcast recently that really captured my attention. In it, Tim Ferriss, noted bio/work/life hacker interviewed Eric Weinstein, a mathematician and economist. Right off the bat, Eric said, “The world is meant to be jail broken.” I don’t think he was talking about opening all prisons, but rather freeing us from mundane thinking because of our experiences and beliefs in “how things should work.” My brain heard, “don’t limit your thinking,” which I really like. Eric referred to people “creating prisons of their own making.” I get that. If we are locked in our thinking and can’t come up with an original thought, we become reliant on others and stymied in our potential, both in home and work life, and the world suffers too.

He went onto talk about our culture’s obsession with reaching consensus. “There is a Washington consensus, a climate consensus. There’s no arithmetic consensus,” it just is… Consensus building-thinking is the antithesis of original thought. Perhaps that’s why I find Facebook boring. For me, I see unending patterns of people trying to reach consensus with each other (Like “me” or Like “this,” over and over…bleh). Being credentialed with multiple degrees and years of experience in the same field can lead to even greater consensus building. Yikes! The world needs more “Renaissance” people!

How can we hope to solve the tough problems of our world with consensus-building thinking leading the way? Do you think Steve Jobs used consensus-building to create the iPhone? No way. Do people intentionally think original thoughts these days? I’ve decided to make it my New Year’s resolution to spend at least a few minutes every day doing some original thinking, on any topic I desire. I’m sure that will be good for me, and who knows, maybe I’ll build my anti-consensus building thinking muscles! Wouldn’t it be great it if lead me to make a new discovery in my Somatics practice? Enjoy the year ahead and hope you can break free of your thinking boundaries!