Daniel Roach.org

As I write this I’m in the middle of Atlanta, Georgia, where we are making this the summer of reactionary thinking. Georgia has been in the middle a drought for the last few months with our average rainfall down 16 inches. What makes this situation reactionary thinking? Well, you see, our water reserve, in the form of the man-made Lake Lanier, is also distributed to Alabama via the Chattahoochee river. Now we send of this water throughout the year to share with a neighboring state and we’ve been watching it go by for months only to look up now and wonder why we have no water in the state of Georgia. H’m . . . there’s a thinker. Could’ve avoided a problem, instead Georgia officials opted to sit around and just hope that it rained. Georgia’s water crisis is not, however, what I want to talk about today, it just happens to be a great example of falling into the trap of reactionary thinking.

Reactionary thinking puts you at a severe disadvantage, because it doesn’t allow you to move forward. Waiting for a problem to occur before you begin dealing with it means you get mired down in the details of the problem and now you’re stuck picking up the pieces instead of moving beyond the problem itself. Or, in the case of Georgia, you’re stuck doing a rain dance. We can’t always see problems coming, but waiting until the last minute to deal with said problem only results in a lot of clean up effort and no time for any forward momentum. Reactionary thinking or ?reactionism,? which is a word I’ve just made up, is like getting a bill from the electric company and ignoring it till they send you that final notice and shut of your power. Now you’re in the dark. Could’ve paid the first bill, now you’re becoming closer friends with candles. Whoops.

Now I could give you a regular list of methods for becoming more proactive, but where’s the fun in that? Why not a list of the 10 strangest, most unorthodox methods? Yeah, that’ll work:

1.Play More Chess ? That’s right, play more chess. Why? Because chess gets you thinking ahead. To become good at chess means that you have be able to not only to visualize all of your possible moves, but also all of your opponents possible moves. Once you’ve done that, you must figure out how you might counter any of those possible moves made by your opponent. In other words you have to be playing the three steps ahead of the actual game. Becoming more proficient at chess will also make you more proficient at thinking ahead of the game in your everyday life. The worst chess players in the world are those people who simply react to each of their opponents moves one at a time. You have to play ahead, or else you’re stuck simply reacting.

2.Play Poker ? Not just any poker either, play Texas Hold ‘em. Not only is poker great for learning how to read people, it’s also a great way to teach yourself to see the big picture. You see, the common misconception in poker is that you’re playing your own hand. That’s not the case. In fact, to play poker well, you must learn to play everyone else’s hands. You have to spend the first few hours of a game sizing up every other player. You need patience. You need to watch and keep track of everything they do, how they bet, how they hold their cards, how they fold a hand, what hands they’re willing to play, everything. Poker will get you used to keeping multiple balls in the air, so to speak. You become accustomed to doing many things at once and developing strategy based on multiple streams of information. And don’t play poker online, if you want to get good, you need the human element.

3.Become a Boxer ? Okay, I suppose any martial art would work, but I’ve grown up boxing so I like this example the best. When you’re standing toe to toe with someone who is ready knock you flat on your ass, playing defense is not an option. Competitive martial arts of any kind are a great example of eat or be eaten. How does this relate to being reactionary? Well, most people who step into a boxing ring are likely to spend the entire fight reacting to their fear of being punched. Learning to move beyond your reaction and taking more offensive steps means that you have a better chance of controlling the bout and it’s outcome. Wait until you get hit to react and you’ll spend the rest of the fight up against the ropes.

4.Guess the Endings ? When you’re watching movies you haven’t seen before, try to guess the endings. Just don’t do it out loud, that annoys people. Start watching television programs and movies more actively, meaning start making more of an effort on your part. Instead of zoning out, really take it all in and ask yourself questions about how you think the story line will end. The more you do this, the better you get at seeing a larger picture and being able to put pieces together in your head before they come together in front of your eyes. You’ll begin to recognizing how all of the small signs culminate for the ultimate conclusion.

5.Listen to Classical Music ? Did you ever wonder why we find classical music so relaxing? It’s because classical and baroque styles were specifically designed to be predictable. This is why you tend to be able to hum along with a classical tune you’ve never heard before. The music was designed to flow in such a way that the audience could follow it, even when hearing it for the first time. This is why parents play classical music for their children. The predictability of the music helps in the development of the child’s spatial reasoning. Babies, even those not yet born, begin to develop the ability to predict what will come next in the music. This active listening will not only train your ear, but it will get you paying attention to what will come next, instead of what has already occurred.

6.Counting Cards ? This may be my favorite method simply for its sheer impressiveness. Counting cards makes mathematicians seem cool. The virtue of learning this skill however is that not only will it improve your memory, but also your ability to think ahead of the curve. When card counting, it isn’t remembering the cards that have passed by that matters, it’s remembering what cards are left in the deck. Instead of playing from the information that has already happened, or playing with the information you have in the present moment, your playing with information that hasn’t even come to light yet, which is why you can’t count cards in casinos. Learn this little skill and you’ll learn to see what’s coming, instead of what is already here.

7.Read Mysteries ? I prefer Encyclopedia Brown, but that may just be a hangover from my childhood. Truthfully I prefer Encyclopedia Brown because the mysteries were meant to be solved by the reader, which means you’re already given all the clues you’ll need through out the text. The point of reading mysteries is obviously so that you will get better at fitting small clues into a larger puzzle. Mysteries teach you to think laterally, which means being able to reasoning that goes beyond normal, progressive logic. They help you to improve your ability to spot patterns and connections within seemingly unconnected things.

8.Play the Stock Market ? Even if you just do it for fun with fake money, playing the stock market is a great way to train yourself to see trends. Not only does it require you to do research and thereby predict successful purchases, it also helps you follow patterns. The more you watch the movement of your stock, the better you’ll get at recognizing events that have happened before and successfully predicting when they will happen again. I played the fake stock market game while I was in high school and it was surprisingly entertaining. You may be surprised yourself at how proactive you have to become when it comes to success through stock.

9.Horse Racing ? Again, you don’t have to bet, just watch and wager with yourself. Horse racing, like the stock market, will get you used to making predictions based on research and trends. Gathering information on the horses running, the jockeys riding, how they have performed in the past and how they look now will get you used to predicting the outcomes based upon your reasoning with multiple streams of income. Sure, luck plays a real factor, but there is a lot to be said for developing a nose for the game. The more you watch the horses over time, the better you’ll get in your predictions. If you have the patience for it, I highly suggest it. It’s entertaining if nothing else and who knows, you could win a few bucks along the way.

10.3 Card Monte ? This method is different from all the others in that it trains you to used your instincts instead of your intelligence. Thus far all of the methods have focused on getting you to think ahead of the curve, to see further ahead in the game of life than you are currently playing. This method is actually all about predicting the outcome via your instincts and peripheral senses. While our conscious mind is focused on one specific thing, there are a myriad of other bits of information being taken in by our peripheral senses. The point of playing 3 Card Monte in this case isn’t to watch the cards closely, but not to pay attention to the cards at all. If you let yourself focus on something else, watching the cards only vaguely, you’ll have to guess based on your gut reaction instead of any overt evidence. Pick the card that you are immediately drawn toward and you’ll be surprised how often you’re right. You might even be better at this game when you’re not looking at it. This method will teach you how to listen to your instincts to predict problems that may already be in the works and head them off before they happen. Hone those instincts, learn to think without thinking.

So there you have it. Ten of the most unorthodox ways of becoming less reactionary and more proactive. At first glance, you may not think that any of these will be at all practical or applicable to your professional or personal life. Trust me, train your brain correctly and you’ll see the difference. Think about it this way, if you trained your brain to think this way through real world applications, you’d gain very hard experience very slowly. Why go through that trouble when a little lateral thinking can give you the same results in half the time with half the struggle?

Go on. Try them. Be Amazed.

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