Think Like A Child

After viewing this video “McGonigal - play videogames, save the world” on rockpapershotgun.com from one of my favourite sites TED, I was so impressed I signed up to her latest innovation, Evoke.

My first task is to choose one of thirty three “secrets of social innovation”.

This was particularly easy once I spotted this one:

And Paul Polak via Nextbillion;

“think like a child – children have no limit to their thinking”

My favourite because it is a theme I have always tried to live my life by.

I must make a distinction here between “childish” and “child like”.

“childish” is the immature self centred disregard for anyone else’s point of view on anything, the grabbing greedy child that just thinks “Mine, mine, mine!”

“child like” on the other hand is that state of grace and wonder that pervades the spirit of seeing without the detritus of thousands of years of experience. Like seeing snow for the first time and only thinking of playing in it. The joy and bewilderment of the total suspension of disbelief that fills the world with fairies and elves and magic.

I was always one of those children that would take the toy car and turn it into something else. I still remember the hours of joy my brother and I derived from a large cardboard box, it was a submarine, a spaceship, a car, and all sorts of other things. I believe it is that sense of infinite possibility that is referred to here in:

“think like a child – children have no limit to their thinking”.