An excerpt from Time to Think, Listening to Ignite the Human Mind, by Nancy Kline, 1999 UK
What the Thinker needs now in order to keep thinking is to get rid of the limiting assumption and to find ideas on the other side.
Finding the Positive Opposite
First you have to make sure you know exactly how to word the freeing assumption that will replace the limiting one. As always, you look to the thinker to find the words.
You know her assumption: I am stupid. So why not just take that assumption, replace it with its opposite, put it into a question, connect it with the goal of the session and varoom - new thinking.
I did exactly that for several years. 'If you knew that you are not stupid, what would you do in this situation?'
This process worked well enough - sort of. If I am honest, it was kind of sluggish. It didn't quite let the Thinker's mind soar because 'not stupid' is only so-so in its positive impact. It is definitely a back door.
One day the Thinker pointed that out to me. I said, 'OK, how about "clever". If you knew that you are clever, what would you do?' That was better. But it still wasn't quite it. She wasn't satisfied. More alarming, she also wasn't having any particularly good ideas from the question.
I was mildly annoyed, but successfully suppressing it. Then a thought - ask the Thinker.
'Well,' I said, 'what to you think would be the right word?'
She thought for a moment. I figured she would say 'clever' after all, or 'intelligent', perhaps. I was waiting, but not fascinated.
'Intriguing,' she said.
Intriguing? I thought. That is not the opposite of stupid, is it?
Apparently. For her. The positive opposite of stupid, in that Thinking Session at that particular moment with that particular woman, seemed to be 'intriguing'.
Who was I to argue? Now I was fascinated.
So I asked her, 'If you knew that you are intriguing, what would you do in this situation?' And I can tell you one thing: from the quality and diversity of the ideas she thought of from that question, intriguing is definitely the opposite of stupid.
So I now systematically ask the Thinker before I construct the Incisive Question to tell me what their positive opposite of that word would be. And I use it. No argument. With hardly an exception the Thinker's word is fresher, more accurate for them, more exactly right, than any I would have thought of.
A truly startling example of this positive opposite principle at work occurred in a session a year later. The Thinker had said, 'I want to feel confident around Sam. But I am assuming that he is better than I am in almost everything.' The Thinking Partner started to say, 'If you knew that Sam is not better than you are . . . ,' but she stopped herself and asked, 'What is your positive opposite of "he is better than I am in every way"?'
The Thinker looked away. Then suddenly her face opened and her eyes danced. She turned back to the Thinking Partner and said, 'I am blindingly stunning in every way.'
Wow. It is always worth the asking. She says that the ideas and action from that accurately, uniquely worded Incisive Question have been continuous and good.
Thanks to Kyung Sook "Walker" Lee, MS, for lending me this book and for being so patient for its return.