What is necessary for people to actually experience a new insight?
For people to experience a new insight either something from the outside intervenes - an emergency – making us to think or act differently; or we question our own view of reality and we intervene in our own conceptions – urgency.
“It is never enough just to tell people about some new insight. Rather you have to get them to experience it in a new way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.
That involves challenging the implicit assumptions that have shaped the way people have historically looked at things. It requires new communication techniques that actually get people to experience the implications of a new innovation” -John Selley Brown, Research That Reinvents the Corporation
This quote nails it for me - “grind a new set of eyeglasses”.
We are walking around; appropriately, convinced that our view of the world is not just our view of the world, it is reality. Or in Lily Tomlin’s words “reality is an ancient form of crowd control that got out of hand”.
First step: engaging people to question their view of reality. Uggh!
We live in a world where we are constantly being judged. By the time we check out at the supermarket the magazine covers have tried to convince us that we are not thin enough, rich enough, powerful enough or popular enough. Invalidation on steroids.
Now you are asking me to question my view of the world? It isn’t my view of the world. I am telling you the way it is – reality.
Ok, hmm, could it possibly be a view, not the view? It is a good view but does it have to be the only view? The first step is allowing people to consider – ooh this is delicate – that maybe our past views of the world do not have to completely determine our present view of the world? This is huge. Remember we are living in a world where our sense of ourselves is under assault – not thin, rich, powerful, popular enough.
Once we have a sense that the stories from the past are wonderful, rich, funny, sad and they are stories. At that moment we become free to experience a new insight. This is where the magic lives – prying ourselves away for a moment, forever, from all that we have considered to be the truth to having it become the truth.
Written by: Bix Bickson, Director of Mojofication