Are you locked into the same ol’/same ol’? Maybe it’s time to shake it up!

Creativity is a lot like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. You look at a set of elements, the same ones everyone else sees, but then reassemble those floating bits and pieces into an enticing new possibility.

— Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Kaleidoscopes are some of my favorite toys – I have a modest little collection, nothing too special but very fun!  Some of them have “stuff” that gets re-scattered with every turn, one has fluids that move and change.  But the ones I like the very best are actually inexpensive plastic, fist-sized toys with prism lenses that refract the real world into crazy mixed-up images – with every turn, my world bends into hundreds of tiny daffy images – very cool!

Recently I heard about an “artist and Dad the second time round,” named Raghava KK and his new iPad app for the children’s stories he’s authored. Much like my little kaleidoscopes, when you shake the iPad, his stories change, revealing new possibilities and perspectives.  In a short TED.com talk, Rags comments:

I’m making an argument that art and creativity are very essential tools in empathy. You know, I can’t promise my child a life without bias – we’re all biased – but I promise to bias my child with multiple perspectives.

What If

Rags’ idea got me to wondering: What if we could, at least temporarily, put our biases aside and shake up our own life stories. What if we could, just for the fun of it, kaleidoscope those stories we tell ourselves? What might we learn?

It seems to me that this could be a very fruitful introspective exercise and might, in the long run, provide us with new life paths to explore and appreciate.  But how would you go about doing that?  I was clueless so I went looking for ideas and here are some that I think might be effective…

First, get a head start by indulging your playful brain with a spatial puzzle – do just the first puzzle and don’t give up if you don’t get it right the first time, give yourself the leeway to make mistakes and have fun by trying again!  Then, if you’re having fun, do the next puzzle.  Or, if the first puzzle sufficiently shook up your brain, move on…

With your newly kaleidoscoped brain, take a look at one of your “life stories” – play it out in your mind’s eye – what’s the story, how did you get here, where do you think you’re going, how do you feel about that? Then, shake it up some: ask yourself questions like these:

• Why did I do/decide/choose/experience that story that way? Whatever your answer is, ask again, “Why?”  Why-it three times.
• What would “So and So” say about this, might they see it differently?  How? (Choose several “someones” whose thinking is contrary to yours.)
• What would the me-I-was-ten-years-ago have said?  Five years from now?
• How would my life be different if I saw things differently?
• Will it matter in five years?

The beauty of this “brain-app” shines through when you shake, shake, shake… and after each shake, look and learn: what’s new and interesting about each perspective?  What do you like, hate, wish for, hope not? Which perspectives would you be willing to do, be reluctant to do, be absolutely opposed to doing, be delighted to pursue?

Now: Do you want to choose a new perspective?  Why? What must you change to make it so?

Remember, the goal is NOT to adopt someone else’s point of view but to shake up your own and then go forward seeing the world from a new multitude of perspectives.

Come on, it’s only play-time; no need to worry about permanent consequences – except of course the ones that bloom out of these new perspectives you discover and like enough to latch on to…

What might you learn if you were to shake up your perspectives?