Does it seem complicated to you to set real priorities on your projects?
You’ve often heard yourself say, “It’s going to depend on a lot of things, the news, my availability, …”
And yet we feel so much more serene when certain things are fixed and considered with determination.
Whatever those things are, you still have to have a clear minimum vision of them. And that’s where it starts to annoy.
How to be in tune with us even when our main criterion for putting our reflection remains rationality?
Yet, we all bring in our daily lives our intuition, our emotions, into our decision-making, minimal or more impactful. We play at any moment to try to listen to them with kindness without they overflow too much, consciously or not!
And that’s why I love Visual Thinking and even more the Lego ® Serious Play ®. It’s also why I thought it was essential to offer workshops in this direction in late 2020 and early 2021: the end of the year encourages us to take stock and the beginning of the year to consider our next projects, professional or personal.
We use the fabulous creative ability of our brain every day, unaware of it.
By letting our hands manipulate coins, take pencils, play with them, watch them, we allow our brain to «play», to let go for a few moments on the purely rational aspect. By telling a drawing, a construction, the fingers show the different elements, we allow ourselves to put some emotions into it and everyone projects himself by visualizing concretely what s difficult to describe with simple words.
« A picture is worth 1000 words »
Confucius expressed it well, visual thought makes tangible and simplifies complex notions to transform them into easily assimilable information.
In the late 1980s, an extraordinary discovery revolutionized the understanding of vision: David Milner and Melvyn Goodale discover that our brain has two visual systems, independent and charged with different and complementary tasks.
The first recognizes the objects, the second locates them and guides our hand towards them. They are far from imagining, when they began their research, that they would question one of the fundamental concepts of human functional anatomy.
Collaborating on different forms of intelligence
You are probably used to approaching your challenges with a rather analytical, logical and structured approach. This way of thinking is one that is inculcated and valued from an early age. The other approach is rather visual, spatial and sensory.
From a physiological point of view, visual thinking enriches with the contribution of the right (intuitive) brain the mode of left (rational) brain functioning.
Intuition, emotions and feelings play an important role and are essential in decision-making. The two approaches can thus combine and interact.
Today, integrating emotional and intuitive intelligence, stimulating thinking in a global and visionary way has become a necessity to deal with the complexity of data. Visual thinking is the ultimate tool that enables the collaboration of all intelligences and fosters innovation.
Making visible, how and why?
Visual Thinking makes it possible to make visible what is not immediately apparent. Through simple and immediate information staging, visual thinking helps stimulate reflection and creativity, simplifies messages and captures attention.
And Lego® Serious Play® ?
This facilitation process (because it is!) awakens the imagination, engages participants 100% and makes it possible to communicate in 3D. And all this using the bricks of our childhood, which allow to build metaphors and tell stories.
I am so happy when I see in a room (most often virtual at the moment) participants bringing the Lego pieces of their children, nephews, friends’ children. Some even go so far as to have planned a barter between friends to be equipped with Legos on D-day!
You are thus able to model your thought in 3D, but not only as you understood it! A real neuroscientific process occurs. When we manipulate an object, we activate directly areas of the brain strongly linked to creativity and imagination, as well as the emotions generated by the construction.
Neurosurgeon Wilder PENFIELD demonstrated the over-connection of the hands to the brain compared to other organs. When you manipulate constructions, you activate specific areas of the brain and “think (literally) with your hands”.
When we don’t know where our priorities are or what things we really care about… let our hearts and emotions express themselves becomes crucial.
Not that easy, especially when we’ve never been taught to do it and it can be scary. My approach will allow you to accompany you there with kindness.