“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea. . . especially if it’s the only one you have.”

Ideas are like wrench sets. If you have too small a set, you can be sure that you’ll never have the one you need when the lawn tractor breaks down. Obsessive people buy huge wrench sets with every possible size, imperial and metric, just in case. Smart ones buy an adjustable wrench or two.

Ideas are much the same. When you need one, it’s usually too late to take the time to find it. And, unlike that vast case of wrenches, your mind can’t hold that many ideas or random bits of information without forgetting most of them. You need the mental equivalent of an adjustable wrench.

That’s a concept: a way of looking at something that can be adjusted to provide the precise answer you need in specific circumstances. Human minds are bad at holding lots of disconnected ideas and bits of learning, but first-rate at recalling and using concepts.

Feeding your imagination

Smart people keep their minds open as much as possible. They aren’t trying to remember everything though; they’re busily feeding their imagination with lots of different ideas. Then their brain gets to work, linking ideas together and forming concepts out of them: the adjustable wrenches they are going to need, sometime, to tackle situations they can’t even guess at today. This gives them the ability to step up to new situations and come out smiling.

Forget most (maybe almost all) the fine sets of tips about how to be more creative and flexible. You need only one: keep your imagination lively and well fed. Feed it with good books, lively magazines, talking with interesting and well-informed people, surfing the web to sites like this one. Creativity needs fuel and it won’t get it from mindless TV programs, trivial items in newspapers and gossiping.

A few people are born dumb. Most spend years achieving dumbness

I’ve worked with with thousands of people, and I’ve always noticed that the least successful and most frustrated ones have the fewest ideas. You can tell this because they keep using the same ones over and over again, regardless of how well they fit what’s needed. Like people whose wrench set has only five sizes, they haven’t any other choice. When their wrenches don’t fit, they’re forced do the best they can, even if that means stripping the head off the bolt. They’ve never even considered the notion of an adjustable wrench.

In psychological terms, they see the world through a small, fixed series of ideas. How did they get them? Typically from the culture in which they were raised. It’s the silly notion that what was good enough for grandpappy is good enough for me — even though grandpappy’s world was more different to today’s than you can imagine. Others buy in to fixed sets of political, social or religious teachings. They’re told that anything else is wicked or heretical. Believing what they’ve been told, however unlikely or out-dated, is the price of acceptance by the group. The majority blame the outside world, their bosses and their job for ‘preventing’ them from being any other way. It’s ‘the way things are around here’.

Whose fault is it if you’re narrow-minded? Gee, it’s yours

Don’t rush to blame others for making your life dull and boring. They haven’t deprived you of the ability to open up your mind and feed your imagination. You’ve done that all by yourself.

Even if your job is tedious and mundane — and your boss is as bigoted as they come and kind as a cornered rat — have you done anything to change things? You may not be able to change the boss, the company or the job itself, but you can always change your own responses — and changing those may well start to change the rest. If you focus on everything except your own behavior, you’ll likely stay trapped and confused.

Some people will try to convince you that you can transform yourself overnight (if you invest in their product first, of course). It’s not totally impossible, but I prefer to be realistic. You need to be patient and learn how to avoid your typical mistakes, build up your natural strengths and develop a sound plan of campaign.

Stock up that mind!

The best way to begin — to stock your mind with what you’ll need — is to read. I’m amazed how few people ever pick up a book, especially a serious one, or a business or news magazine. If you don’t feed your brain, it’ll starve and wither away.

But don’t just read, take action too — and that starts with thinking about what you’ve read and whether you think it’s right or useful. Nothing you find in any book is useful until you think it through careful and act on what you discover. Reading alone won’t transform your day or make you a success. I’ve met people who spend hundreds of dollars on self-help and inspirational books, attend seminars and training courses and never change the way they think or behave as a result. I guess that’s good for the authors and trainers, but it doesn’t do much for the person spending all that time and cash.

Read, think, act. Take it in that order and you won’t go far wrong.

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