Then, as you contemplate the day in front of you, try to ask yourself these questions. If you have room on your mirror, copy them over and tape them there, too.

What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?

As you think of opportunities, form a plan, and ask:

When, where, and how will I embark on my plan?

When, where, and how make the plan concrete. How asks you to think of all the ways to bring your plan to life and make it work.

As you encounter the inevitable obstacles and setbacks, form a new plan and ask yourself the question again:

When, where, and how will I act on my new plan?

Regardless of how bad you may feel, chat with your fixed-mindset persona and then do it! And when you succeed, don’t forget to ask yourself:

What do I have to do to maintain and continue the growth?

Instead of prematurely asking what you should do, try something new. Ask no questions rather than an action question. Try meditating, exercising, sensing your arms and legs, or any of the approaches we have suggested for putting you in touch with your inner creative ability. Then try answering any or all of the following questions:

• What is it I don’t yet understand? This question or ones like it can penetrate the mind for clarity and understanding.

• What is it that I’m really feeling? When there is a problem there are usually emotions - fear, anger, hurt, or sorrow - and this question can help you become aware of seeing them specifically.

• What is it that I’m not seeing? Problems usually come from not seeing clearly. By asking about what you are not seeing specifically, almost as if it consists of material objects, you heighten your perceptual ability.

• What voice is speaking? Is it your Voice of Judgment, your objective intelligence, your voice of childhood emotions or fears, or the voice of your Essence speaking inside of you? You can bet that if you have a problem, the objective intelligence and the Essence are relatively silent. But personifying and identifying the inner voices contributing to a problem sometimes is enough in itself to achieve the clarity needed for action.

This kind of exploratory questioning for clarity doesn’t take long, especially when preceded or followed by meditation.

The oversight group had been put in place without anyone asking a fundamental question: How do we enable our people to solve problems? Instead, they asked: How do we prevent our people from screwing up? That approach never encourages a creative response. My rule of thumb is that any time we impose limits or procedures, we should ask how they will aid in enabling people to respond creatively. If the answer is that they won’t, then the proposals are ill suited to the task at hand.

Rather than taking the default approach, or thinking about what one should do, the researchers asked them to think about what they could do instead.

This simple shift made a big difference. People who thought about what they could do came up with much better solutions. They were higher quality and three times as creative. Rather than getting bogged down in which of two imperfect options was best, asking people to think

about what they could do encouraged them to bring a different mindset to the problem.

Could” led to more innovative solutions because it encouraged divergent thinking. Thinking outside the box and without boundaries. Considering multiple approaches, encouraging new connections, and reducing the likelihood of settling for obvious answers. Rather than just seeing things for how they are, thinking in terms of “could” encourages us to see them for how they could be. To overlook the obvious and explore different ways of doing things.