Warmth and Clarity

I heard of one great thinker from Malta, Edward de Bono. Brilliantly, his speciality is clarity! He is still a professor at the university there. He’s famous for his model of reasoning using six distinct hats of thinking. This is taught as part of the business studies masters. Since I got home, I've even seen his books in several friends' houses, so its a sort of self development system too that we can all try. So the colour system is:
Think of a life or work situation you want to move on then identify
Blue - Overall Objectives
Red - Feelings
White - Facts
Green - Possible Creative Solutions
Yellow - Pros
Black - Cons

1. When problem solving you should start with the blue, outlining the whole picture.
2. Then feelings should be acknowledged, so the red mode of discussing the effect on the individuals involved has to be addressed.
3. That allows the white, the facts to be set out dispassionately.
4. Then creative solutions can be proposed, from the Green thought processes.
5. Then pros and cons explored. One should always look at positives first and then negatives. If you outline negatives first, even at this stage, they tend to saturate and stall the process of resolution.

On top of hearing this man’s theory, I received another instruction to practice distinguishing my thoughts. (I had previously assumed they were all good, intuitive and guided ... or... dredged up bleakness from the past and my main job was to notice and not fall for the latter!) So, the second message I got came from that brilliant yellow monkey I met. I looked up the meaning if a monkey shows up and it read - ‘be very distinct, congruent and clear in your thoughts, body language and actions’. So I’m going to put some of my current ideas about love, reality and music through the Edward de Bono system and see what happens. In regard to aligning my body language and actions, I made a leap of faith instead! This was in the form of some cliff diving at St Peter’s Pool. There was the clearest water at the bottom that I’ve ever seen but still I was scared stiff for a very long time before I did it. I hope it will be the start of many leaps of faith and confident steps in to the unknown and completely exhilerating. For me there had not been flight or fight, only freeze! Thankfully, the thaw has begun.