We need to take the time to crystallize our thinking, which means writing down our thoughts and intentions.
It raises the level of awareness in our life and enables us to become more productive and make more productive choices.
Here is an example; if you were to be asked do you have dreams, goals, values, priorities, strengths, and weaknesses, most everyone would say yes.
But then if you were asked what are your top five most important goals you would like to accomplish in the next year, in their priority? What values to they reflect? What strengths can you capitalize on and what weaknesses must you overcome to bring these goals to completion?
But keep it simple, just the top five single most important goals your current day to day efforts and intentions are supposed to achieve.
We are each responsible for choosing the standards and directions for our own life.
No one knows what you want better than you and no one is going to be sorrier than you if you don’t get it.
So we get the term crystallized thing by looking at the properties of water. The thought in our mind is like a fog it’s easily dissipated. A thought that is verbalized is like water and once dumped over its spreads itself out and evaporates.
But a thought that is written is like a crystallized block of ice with three dimensions that can be shaped and viewed from all angles. Crystallized thinking gives us the capacity to think and reflect on our own thoughts. To put the value of written thought into perspective here is a question that most third graders can answer.
What is 627 plus 749? Now very few people can answer that question off the top of their head and before you even attempt it, here’s the point.
It’s a simple, basic arithmetic function, adding two three digit numbers if we write it down. It becomes much more difficult to do it in our head.
But yet, most people are trying to do their entire life in their head; sorting out their finances, career opportunities, health issues, fitness, family, and home and for each of those areas becoming consciously aware of our long and short term objectives to have missions identified, values clarified and priorities justified.
It’s not unusual to see people spend more time planning a two week vacation that you do the rest of the year, and sometimes even the rest of their life and you wonder why they’re having a difficult time breaking success barriers or struggling to become the person they feel they need to be or are being called to be so they can achieve their personal life objectives.
Lilly Tomlin jokingly once said, “I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific”.
So whether it be a sales career, managing others to greater achievement or improving the quality of our family life, it’s only through crystallized thinking that we can break through that ceiling of complexity that encompasses our lives and impedes our progress.
As we crystallize our thoughts it challenges us to draw upon our lifetime of education and training experience and setting new standards and creating the best outcomes in our life.
Its value multiplies if you need to coordinate the ideas and actions of a work team. Even with the best intentions they rarely move in the same direction because of the different level of expectation. There is an abundance of wasted opportunity when even small teams of people are trying to move forward without a crystallized process to coordinate their efforts.