Rethink: How to Think Differently [Paperback]

"...an absolute delight...truly innovative and interesting...lively and amusing"

"This latest book will certainly provoke thought...an entertaining
read."

What does it take to re–think anything in your life? Sometimes nothing short of turning your whole world upside down. Slow down your thinking for a moment. What is your brain doing? Almost certainly trying to come up with a single right answer because then you can stop thinking about the problem. All too often we are not really thinking, but sleepwalking through life. Fresh angles on familiar problems elude us. Re–thinking is the opposite: it means seeing better or different solutions. In other words, thinking as unusual. Rethink shows you why and how.

What if today you were to . . . Buy a new newspaper? Take a different route home? Say ‘yes’ to everything your partner asks? Invent new rituals for your family? Surround yourself with beauty? Try a first take at the creative fantasy sleeping in the attic of your mind? Find a new hero? Discover more about your upbringing? Act as if anything were possible rather than yes–butting the new?

You’d be a re–thinker. Why not? There’s always a better or different solution to the way you lead your personal or professional life. Rethink will help you to stop living on autopilot and reawaken your sense of wonder, curiosity, and creativity.

What Do You Need To Rethink In Your Life Right Now?

You can apply a re-think to pretty much anything, from improving family life and the quality of your prime relationship to coming up with better ideas at work and acting on your real passions. To re-think means to come up with different and better solutions to familiar problems – in other words, to think as unusual.

Re-think is based on 20 years of experience helping individuals and organisations to creatively re-think their lives and businesses. The central idea is that creative insight is already there, latent in our minds, but so often obscured by busyness, fixed patterns of thought and mindless routines. To remedy this we need to find methods, provocations, and even tricks to be in our right mind, the one that sees possibility over impossibility, creativity rather than negativity.

In life you are either a creator or a critic, the former characterised by favouring ‘Why not? What if?’ thinking, the latter tending to ‘yes, but’ anything new. How to achieve this is described in Re-think, and applied, among other things, to:

• Becoming more curious – and falling in love with life again
• Fostering and trusting your intuition
• Understanding your own preferred style of thinking
• Creating the environment for more ‘eureka’ moments
• Inventing personal and family rituals to enrich life

There are 20 Re-thinks like this in the book, and not a mention of ‘thinking outside the box’ or ‘you can change your life right now!’ type thinking. Self-help books that advocate choosing a new attitude as if you were choosing a pair of shoes really get my goat. Changes made like this are ephemeral, cerebral, and washed away in a short time like a child’s sandcastle.

What I’ve done in Re-think is to allow you to take more control in creating the kind of life you know you are capable of leading. Not in a way that asks you questions like ‘Where do you want to be in 5 year’s time?’ or ‘What do you want your obituary to say’, but in more subtle ways that seep into the way you see the world, inspiring you to recognise fresh, different, and better approaches to your daily preoccupations. It could be something as trivial as reading a new newspaper (we are what we read) or a more profound idea like spring-cleaning the beliefs that may be holding you back, gradually establishing new and more useful ones.

Should you re-think everything? No – you’d go crazy. But you are probably already aware of those areas of your life or work that vitally need a re-think. So when you need to see a fresh or different view, Re-think will help you to get into your right mind.

My aim is to re-engage you with thinking about life’s bigger questions in a myriad of practical ways. I come from a culture that revels in understatement, with the three highest superlatives in English being:

• Quite good
• Rather nice
• Not bad!

So treat this as English marketing. Rather than tell you that this book will change your life – it won’t, you will (but it can help) – I’d rather you agreed with my clients and friends around the world that the ideas in Re-think are not bad at all. Let me know!

Nigel May Barlow

It′s thinking as unusual. Seeing a fresh, different, or better solution to any problem, whether you want to reorganize your life′s priorities, become closer to your partner, or dream up a new idea at work.

Are–think can apply to pretty much anything in your life...

Re–think explains how Bob Dylan, a siesta, a parrot, children, and many other things can help you to creatively re–think.

We can all sleepwalk our way through life, and find after a short time in a job or a relationship that we′ve simply gone blind to the possibilities around us. Opening our minds and developing a childlike sense of  curiosity is what re–think is all about. It will help you break out of blinkered, habitual patterns of thought to become the creator of a richer life youself. It will also help you unlearn what you have learnt, which will sometimes mean breaking the habit of lifetime.

Being creative is not just the reserve of the Einsteins, da Vincis and Richard Bransons of the world. You, too, can be just as inspired.

Nigel May Barlow is a re–thinker, agent provocateur, and creative presenter to many of the world′s leading organizations. He has inspired individuals and companies around the world to creatively re–think their lives and businesses. His last book was Batteries Included! – Creating Legendary Customer Service. Nigel is well known for this entertaining and inspiring presentations. After a wrong early career choice, he learnt that you could have far more fun as a a re–thinker. He lives in Oxford, England and Heathrow Departures Lounge.