Thinking at the Edge
Have you ever had a sense that you have something important to say, but you cannot put it into words? Or you try, and other people don’t get it? Maybe you never do justice to the ideas you have, or you struggle to think clearly, or you tell yourself that you cannot think at all.
Thinking at the Edge is a way to develop thinking which is truly creative and innovative. It is based on the premise that we all have something unique to offer, an insight or understanding that comes directly from our own unique and individual experience. Often, these insights remain uncommunicated simply because we have not yet found a way to articulate them in a way that other people will understand or recognise.
This process called Thinking at the Edge was devised by the philosopher Gene Gendlin to help his own students develop their thinking capacity. Its in-depth, sequential approach takes us to the core of our thought processes. It illuminates the ‘public language barriers’ which block or hinder the responses we want from others, and allow us to move beyond dead-end, outmoded or exhausted ways of thinking that may consist in putting ourselves aside and merely rearranging remembered concepts. We discover how to speak freshly from the source of what we know in ways that may be startling and unexpected even to ourselves. When what we say carries this sort of aliveness, we are able to catch and hold people’s attention, in language which rings true.
Life at Work offers individual coaching sessions and specially tailored courses for people to learn and benefit from the skills of Thinking at the Edge.
Benefits of Thinking at the Edge
We are increasingly able to:
- Think and speak from the source of what we know
- Uncover unique perspectives, born of our own unique experience
- Find fresh forms for old ideas
- Move from what we sense or believe to something we can fully know and express
- Translate our inner world of ideas into something others can relate to
- Find exciting, unexpected phrases which flow directly from our core
- Communicate in ways which captivate others and enliven discourse
More information about Thinking at the Edge can be found on our Focusing Approaches pages.
More Possibilities for Thinking at the Edge
In addition to the examples given on our approaches pages here are some more ways in which TAE may be applied:
- Are you developing business ideas which you would like more widely recognised? Do you want to put these ideas across in a way which will catch the attention of busy, sceptical colleagues, and which gives you the satisfaction of contributing something unique?
- Are you writing a dissertation, book or manual? Are you tired of trying to fit your ideas into other people’s frameworks, or simply borrowing concepts from others? Are you ready to develop concepts that you can call your own, and that come directly out of your own knowledge or research?
- Are you launching a new venture? Are you feeling ready for the change, but needing to gather your resources as you enter this new territory? Are you needing to really inhabit what you know, so that you can stand assured in yourself, and communicate it differently and effectively to others?
- Are you leading a community project or some other valuable endeavour? Do you want to pass on what you have learned so that others can benefit from your experience, rather than starting from scratch with no support or guidelines — perhaps as you did?
- Are you working in a field where unspoken embodied knowledge is primary — for example, body-work, dance, midwifery, animal welfare? Would you like to articulate some of that knowing through words?
- Have you had an experience that has touched you deeply — yet you have not yet found the words to communicate it? Perhaps you hesitate to put it into words for fear of losing its power and magic, or for fear of not being taken seriously. Yet that experience feeds and informs you. It has become a touchstone, a kind of secret resource to which you return over and over again. Can you trust the process of finding your own words?
- Have you been teaching or training for a long time? Do you feel you have more to say than your usual well-rehearsed topics? Do you want to connect freshly to what may now feel stale, and share your knowledge from a deeper, more statisfying level?
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