Divergent Thinking - Tarot Style!

The big buzz words in creativity and innovation circles these days? Convergent thinking and divergent thinking. If you work with Tarot or the Bright Idea Deck to brainstorm new ideas and generate insights, these “cutting edge” concepts will be old hat to you!

So what does convergent thinking imply? Consider the base word: converge. A circle of predators converges on its prey. On a globe, longitude lines converge to a point at the north and south poles. In a mystery story, the detectives slowly converge on the killer. At the Chinese restaurant tonight, my friends and I plan to converge on the mu gu gai pan. Get the idea?

Convergent thinking, then, happens when we abandon "the roads less traveled" and head for safe, familiar territory: the answers already expected, the conclusions already reached, and the strategies known to be tried and true. As Physician Ulrich Kraft notes in a recent article, instead of exploring options or alternatives, "convergent thinking aims for a single, correct solution to a problem" ("Unleashing Creativity" Scientific American Mind, Volume 16, Number 1, p. 19).

Anyone who works for a corporation knows at least one senior manager who has perfected the art of convergent thinking. Such managers are easy to spot; they make a great show of calling meetings and collecting input ... and then go right ahead and do what they had always planned to do in the first place! (Grrrr...)

The more aware of convergent thinking you become, the more often you spot it in yourself and others:

- Clients who expect a Tarot reading to give them the one, right answer
- Soulmates in search of the one individual who’s just right for them
- Bosses who want it "my way or the highway"
- Kids who pitch fits unless they get one particular toy
- Home buyers who obsess on one particular property and ignore others
- Drivers who insist on never asking for directions ... because they’ve never had to before
- Partners who treat spouses a certain way because that’s how Mommy treated Daddy.
- Authorities who insist something can’t be done because it hasn’t been done before
- Religious folks convinced there’s One Way to heaven – theirs!

As it turns out, these folks aren’t stubborn … they’re just human. In fact, the latest research into the creative process reveals all of us may well be hardwired to be convergent thinkers by default!

In his book, The Thinker’s Toolkit, Morgan D. Jones notes that convergent thinking is probably linked to survival. Let’s say some early humans hear a noise in the bushes. Convergent thinkers immediately conclude the noise is a tiger, run away, and live to pass on their genes. The other cavemen and women – those who stick around to see what’s *really* in the bushes – are much more likely to wind up as tasty tidbits for the tiger!

But while we may have an evolutionary disposition toward convergent thinking ... we don’t have to be slaves to our reflexes! In the article mentioned earlier, Ulrich Kraft notes, "Creative people can free themselves from conventional thought patterns and follow new pathways to unusual or distantly associated answers. This ability is known as divergent thinking, which generates many possible solutions" ("Unleashing Creativity," p 19).

Ah, divergent thinking. Divergence is a cousin to words like diversity and diversification; the term implies heading off in new directions. Divergent thinkers are the "bad boys and girls" of brainstorming. They turn things upside down. They break the rules. They do stuff backwards. They start at the end. Ask ‘em to put two and two together, and they get twenty-two.

Divergent thinking is the cornerstone of creativity; without it, we’d always do the same old things in the same old ways. One way to identify divergent thinkers, according to creativity experts, is to identify folks who excel at "ideational fluency." (That’s the new, cutting edge term for what you and I have always called "free association.")

How do researchers test for skill in free association? As Kraft explains, it’s easy: "[We count] the number of ideas, sentences, and associations a person can think of when presented with a word … the diversity of different solutions a person can find when asked to explore the possible uses of, say, a newspaper or a paper clip."

If you’re already using Tarot as a tool for creative problem solving, you’ll see right away how Tarot encourages and reinforces divergent thinking. Once you free yourself from the mindset that looks for The Answer, relating the cards to the problem at hand forces you to adopt new perspectives. Imagining that a series of cards represent several possible answers to your dilemma encourages you to explore alternative courses of action others will overlook!

The next time you feel convergent thinking converging on you ... reach for the Tarot! Divergent thinking – and enhanced personal creativity – is just a card or two away.