Flipping

I've been reading Creative Confidence by design process geniuses Tom and David Kelly.  David started the "d.school" at Stanford.  The program is interdisciplinary in that students come to the design with  majors from other schools, many, if not most, of them not traditionally considered creative disciplines. 

David describes what happens once students "embraced the philosophy of design thinking.  Students began visiting him during office hours--sometimes months after the class was over--to tell him that they had started to see themselves as creative individuals for the first time....Their eyes would light up with excitement, with a sense of opportunity.  Sometimes they cried. David came up with a name for the transformation he was observing: 'flipping'--changing from one state of mind to another."

I've been there. 

I've guided clients as they found their ways there.

Flipping: changing from one state of mind to another.

I am quite confident of one thing about flipping: once a person has flipped, there is no going back.  I like to say we cannot not know what we have come to know.  If someone tells us something, we can choose to believe or not.  We can be wishy-washy and swing back and forth to suit the circumstances.  But when we have come to know the Truth about who we are, we cannot not know that.

The power of that Truth is terrifying to step into..to step up to.  Some attempt to walk away, but a haunting refrain plays in the back of our psyche echoing, "You know who you are." 

So, if you have been gifted with a flip, grab it...and run for all you are worth.