butterflies

August 15. 2020

Lateral thinking permits obscure thoughts and answers for weird and questionable scenarios. The ideas may not be the final outcome, but they can make an appearance in the journey.

Q. A man is found in the middle of the desert. He is lying face down.

He is dead. All that is with him is his backpack.

How did he die?

A number of possibilities come to mind; dehydration, starvation, murdered or heatstroke? Maybe his camel freaked out and shrugged him off before making a run for it, he hit his head and he died that way? Maybe, he choked on a peanut?

The answer that was published: His parachute never opened.

Q. A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you” and walks out.

What happened?

Have a think…

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A. 

The man has the hiccups!

The bartender scares them away by pulling a gun.

This example is a little different than the first one. Reason being, it’s harder to figure out why someone would say thank you to having a gun pulled on them when all they had done was ask for a drink. Our minds don’t see the logic in the situation and so we tend to get stuck. Lateral thinking forces us to come up with something, even if it’s different. It is that ‘different’ that forms an imaginary line between good and great in everything we create.

I started my preparation for SCA knowing little to nothing about advertising and fearful of not succeeding. I used the fear to drive myself straight into the deep end and became rigorous in my preparation. I listened to the podcasts, I researched the legends and read the books. Each moment I spent listening, reading and writing I became fonder of the subject, eager to learn more and nearly addicted to it. I began to feel safe with knowledge and I quickly realised that I identified with the subject. I no longer felt anxious. The fear and doubt that had been worming through my body for months had, in one moment, turned into butterflies.