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In 2003 Roger von Oech created a set of cards called: “Innovative Whack Pack … 60 Creativity Strategies to Provoke and Inspire Your Thinking.” On one side of the card is an insight from Heraclitus, who according to von Oesch was “the world’s first creativity teacher … on the other side a strategy “inspired by each insight” and enriched by the author in a clever way to “whack you” out of old thought patterns.

On card # 43, this Insight: “A thing rests by changing” and then an explanation: “This paradox assumes that everything is always changing and that”it often takes less energy to move on to the next phase than fighting to stay in the current one.” Going with the flow in the river is suggested vs. swimming against the current. And then this: “If you allow yourself to let go of a cherished position, strategy, or belief – especially one that takes increasingly more effort to hold on to – you are more easily able to discover new alternatives.”

So today’s question: “where would your energy be better focussed: on where you’ve been or on where you’re going? Is it time …to move on to the next phase? Only you can answer that. Hint: think of  several applications e.g.  If I continue to keep track of ways that didn’t work will that allow me to take a next step? … and so on.

Today’s image from a stairway between floors at the Denver Art Museum is perhaps an illustration of this issue. If at the bottom I move up the stairs I’m moving to the next phase(exhibition) to discover a new offering. If I’m at the top looking back I can remind myself where I’ve been but not stay there since it could “increasingly take more effort” …
IBK