BEING SUCCESFUL!
All of us aspire to be successful. The path to success is most often not simple and is bereft with obstacles/ problems. However, what do successful people do differently, when they face a problem, they look at it from another perspective.
This helps them to come up with great solutions.
Most of us look at situations/challenges through our frames. Where do these frames come from? Frames get created from our experiences in life. We are creating frames constantly from what we see, hear, and experience all day long. What do these frames do – they both inform and limit the way we think. Most of the times these frames become our lens to see the world.
Success comes only with changing/validating these lenses. To change we need to question and shift our frame of reference. This is an important key to enhancing your imagination because it reveals completely different insights and widens our perspectives. By changing the frame, we can dramatically change the range of possible solutions. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
For eg: What is the sum of 5 plus 5?”
“What two numbers add up to 10?”
The first question has only one right answer, and the second question has an infinite number of solutions, including negative numbers and fractions. These two problems, which rely on simple addition, differ only in the way they are framed.
To survive in today’s competitive world reframing our perspectives is the key to success.
Reframing problems, is not a luxury but a need. Companies have had to continually reframe their businesses in order to survive.
For example, Kodak defined its business as making cameras and film. When digital cameras made film photography obsolete, the company lost out badly, because it wasn’t able to open its frame early enough to see its business as including this new technology.
On the other hand, Netflix began delivering DVDs of movies by mail. It framed its goals much more broadly, however, seeing itself as in the movie-delivery business, not just the DVD-delivery business. When technology allowed online delivery of movies, it was poised to dominate in this new arena, too. We are also seeing the same thing happen with books. Amazon was originally set up to deliver hard copies of books, but it has enthusiastically reframed its business and embraced the sale of electronic books, and even designed its own digital book reader.
Reframing problems takes effort, attention, and practice, and allows you to see the world around you in a brand-new light. You can practice reframing by physically or mentally changing your point of view, by seeing the world from others’ perspectives, and by asking questions that begin with “why.”
Let’s reframe our perspectives to eliminate blocks that limit us and prevent us from reaching our goals/dreams.
