Children are funny.  They want to eat when hungry, sleep when tired, seek help when hurting, and laugh recklessly when amused.  Children live at extremes.

As we mature we learn to temper these extremes, but most of us go too far.  We no longer fully engage in our world; we retreat inward.  We don't seek to satisfy our needs such as rest or aid or anything else that renews us.  

To be Fully Engaged and Renewing is the final stage of Being.  It is one of self-awareness and humility that we seem to mistake for weakness.  Humility is simply a sober view of yourself, both strengths and needs.  Choosing to fully engage and renew may seem outside your comfort zone, extreme even, but it is essential to realizing our authentic, balanced selves.  

Have you ever injured your hand or foot or anywhere that affected your natural activity?  

If so, you know how long it can take to adjust.  You may have also noticed how easily we take for granted things like using all our fingers, walking without pain or seeing out of both eyes.  Without the usual full expression of your body even simple acts can seem difficult.  

Unfortunately, many of us work and live without fully expressing our mental and emotional abilities. Because of some wound, pain or fear we avoid certain areas and favor others.  Our habits of daily behavior may seem natural but most of us struggle to achieve our Fully Expressed Genius.  

For example, using only our intellect instead of including our emotional reasoning will make our mind over-worked and our heart weakened. When using our whole selves while living and working we find that everything, simple or complex, seems much easier.  

Q: What difference would a healthy dose of Generative Thinking make possible for you and your team?

Big money has been made over the last few decades in the American business world in a surprising manner: Bootlegging.
 
Bootlegging originally started in the 1920s during prohibition.  No longer allowed to buy alcohol people started experimenting and making their own.  It was off-the-grid and illegal but people made plenty of money and the cocktail culture was born.  
 
Some of today's most successful products are the result of sanctioned bootlegging in business.  That means team members are allowed to experiment with methods, products and new thinking outside their traditional process.  It requires risk, guts, and trust.  However, products like Post-It Notes, Scotch Tape, and Kevlar would never have been created otherwise. 
 
Business bootlegging is just one example of Generative Thinking.  Most of us accustomed to incremental thinking might find the generative version unsettling.  New ideas always are.  Incremental thinking may inch us forward but Generative Thinking will help us break though by leaps and bounds.  

Years ago a small group of designers and engineers thought everyone should have their own loom to make their own fabric.

Most of their colleagues insisted that even if they could make it, nobody would want one.  Looms are machines for big business, not individuals.  Nevertheless, this small affiliation of creators kept making prototypes until people started actually buying them.  Eventually most of America had one.

Of course, all this is true except for the loom part. Instead of the loom the personal computer is the real invention.  But, the struggle was the same, and the critics weren't wrong.  There was no market for a home-based computer.

Gates, Jobs, and others who created the personal computer market had what we call a Receptive Worldview.  Where most saw no market they saw opportunity; where most saw walls they saw break through.

Having a Receptive Worldview means releasing your judgments and limits on situations and people.  It feels risky, but without it we may never really break though.

Q: How could appreciating other's internal dialogue, whatever fragments they allow you to see, cause you to be more mindfully present with them?

Have you ever met people who say whatever comes to their mind?  There are no secrets, no internal monologue, no filter.  Occasionally entertaining and at times a bit much.  

Most of us think plenty of things we never say.  If you could hear the internal thoughts of peers, clients, family and friends it might change the way you view and behave with them.  

Having a mindful presence with others includes being aware that they too have unspoken motivations, fears, and goals. Approaching them from a point of discernment rather than judgment gives us more opportunity for understanding, a foundation of wisdom.