Charles Kiefer - The Art of Insight: How to Have More Aha! Moments

The ART of
INSIGHT

OTHER BOOKS BY CHARLES KIEFER

Action Trumps Everything: Creating What You Want
in an Uncertain World

with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Paul B. Brown

Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty,
Create the Future

with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Paul B. Brown

HOW TO HAVE
MORE AHA! MOMENTS

Charles Kiefer Malcolm Constable

The Art of Insight

Copyright 2013 by Charles Kiefer and Malcolm Constable

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60994-809-2

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-810-8

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-811-5

2013-1

Cover design by Steve Pisano

Book design and production by Beverly Butterfield, Girl of the West Productions

Copyediting by PeopleSpeak

Indexing by Rachel Rice

One insight can change your life, and the next can change your organization, or even the world.

We are all born with the capacity for insight, a capacity that remains with us our entire lives. Insights are those aha moments when the clouds part and the solution to your problem arises right in front of you. They happen when fresh new light is spread on a subject youve considered for some time. With insight, we enjoy wisdom, balance, and perspective. We have all experienced these moments of deep understanding, even if we might not know what to call them or how to describe them. They occur while were showering, jogging, daydreaming, sleeping, or talking with someone about unrelated subjects. Suddenly, usually when we are not consciously thinking about the subject, an answer pops into our heads. The fog lifts. The issue is clarified. The confusion dissolves. And the situation becomes so simple and so obvious that we cant imagine how we missed it before. Surprisingly, these moments can be made to occur with much greater regularity. With them, you will find new paths of thought and new solutions that are permanent and easy to implement.

Think of a tricky problem that you have lived with for too long in either your work or your personal life. No doubt, you have had insights toward solving this problem. You experienced new thoughts on the subject that provoked a deeper understanding. Or you saw something fresh that lifted your spirits and washed away a low mood, clearing the space for a new line of inquiry. As we explore the nature of insight, youll see how these past experiences can help you reconnect with the principles and source of your insights.

Our goal is for you to generate insights quickly and easily so that with greater regularity, you can access them when you need them most.

Put simply, if you want more insights in your life, this book is for you. It is a concise guide to simple actions that can help anybody cultivate a habit of having more frequent and timely insights. With the appearance of more insights, you will make better decisions, find solutions to difficult problems, and offer fresh thinking on any subject.

Regrettably, for most of us, life trains us out of employing this natural thinking process, and we lose the habit of making insight a more regular and expedient occurrence. The approach and methods offered in this book will reconnect you with that ability and help you increase the frequency, strength, and value of the insights you experience each day.

If you feel like you make poor decisions, getting stuck in ruts of low-quality thinking; if you continually feel the need to work hard to overcome resistance; if you would like to experience more confidence, more resilience, and a greater sense of peace; or if you simply want more insights, both big and small, in your life, then this book is for you.

Based on what people who have mastered the methods in this book report, you should experience the following benefits at work and at home:

Your problems wont hang around and will often seem to solve themselves.

Youll make decisions more quickly, with greater confidence, fewer mistakes, and better overall judgment.

Your interactions with other people will improve.

Your personal schedule will relax, and you will find time to live and work with ease.

Energy will be freed for the things you care about.

Meetings will be shorter and flow efficiently.

Better decisions will be made.

Solutions will emerge that are easily implemented.

All these phenomena are a result of an improved capacity for insight.

The applications for what we have termed The Art of Insight (TAOI) are limitless. Whether you want to make better decisions, solve intractable problems, understand others better, or gain a new perspective on anything, insights are the answer.

As you read further into this book, you are going to appreciate something that you have always suspected, if not known. There is no set recipe for how to have more insights. And, unlike the formulaic steps in many business and self-improvement books, the practice of Insight Thinking is more art than science. Insight is a form of thought, and of course, everyone thinks a bit differently, just as everyone paints or writes differently. Like any art, it can be developed. With practice and attention, we can foster this innate capacity and enjoy the many benefits of a more insightful life.

Were going to give you a summary of whats in this book. First, we want to call your attention to the difference between what we term intellectual learning and insight learning. We hope youll read and absorb this book with the latter.

Intellectual learning relies on accumulating facts, processing those facts, storing those facts in memory, and then connecting them in a very methodical and thoughtful way. Insight learning works differently: its active in the sense that we are looking for insights, but it also occurs passively on its own through a subconscious reflective process that is more receptive than active. Often very diverse facts we already know are put together in a new way. Insight learning is all about