Complainer Trainer

Fauxels. (2019, October 22). Women Standing beside Corkboard [Photograph]. Pexels. https://images.pexels.com/photos/3184296/pexels-photo-3184296.jpeg?cs=srgb&dl=pexels-fauxels-3184296.jpg&fm=jpg

What is Alternative Thinking?

Alternative Thinking basically boils down to looking at a given issue through different perspectives. It involves putting aside your personal views, feelings and emotions in order to perceive the circumstances through different positions, other than your own. (ExploringYourMind, 2021)

Alternative thinking is another way to rethink or redirect your thoughts through a given situation that is more beneficial than thinking negatively or emotionally going through a hypothetical situation.

(Fenceroy, 2011, Page 7)

Alternative thinking involves stepping away from a situation and taking a look at the bigger picture, devoid of negativity, in order to broaden your overall perception of the issue. Here is an example scenario that highlights how to apply alternative thinking:

A woman is on her way to work and her car stops on the freeway. Here are two ways she can think about the situation. (...)

Her first instinct or thought could be, "Oh! I am going to be late for work, and my boss will not like that."
Alternative thinking: "Thank God I was able to pull over out of the traffic before someone could hit me."

"Now, I have to pay someone to tow my car."
Alternative thinking: "I am so fortunate to have towing service with my automobile insurance. I just hope I paid my premium. If not, today is my brother's off day and he has a big truck so he will help me."

"Just because I am a female, the mechanic is going to take advantage of me, and I am going to pay more, perhaps for something that I do not even need repairing at this time."
Alternative thinking: "You know if something has really gone wrong with my car, I want to know. Getting it repaired could save my life."
Alternative thinking: "Considering all that has happened, it is cheaper to get my car repaired than buying a new one and having to make monthly payments."

(Fenceroy, 2011, Page 8)

How can Alternative Thinking help in Conflict Resolution?

Alternative Thinking provides a plethora of benefits to conflict resolution.

For one, by thinking about the problem through an emotionally-deprived lens you'll find it easier to remain calm. You'll be able to reduce any emotional stress that may span from a naturally stressful event.

Secondly, its easy in conflicts to stand your ground on solutions or opinions you formulated due to your own bias or emotions. This is not productive to conflict resolution as it prevents you from cooperating with others to reach a common solution. It makes you tunnel vision on what you think is right, completely disregarding valid concerns or points others may be raising. Alternative Thinking allows you to consider different perspectives, other than the one you may be inclined towards. In doing so, you'll more easily reach a consensus towards a common resolution, almost certainly better than the one you would have reached were you to stick to your own views of the issue. Remember that: "Life is NOT a zero-sum game, neither is conflict resolution". (Sowunmi, 2018)

Through Alternative Thinking you'll be able to generate more solutions to a conflict, rather than the first that comes to your mind. You'll be able to move away from pessimism and towards positivism. You'll find it easier to cooperate with others to solve issues, by considering views devoid of your own personal beliefes and opinions. You'll be able to broaden your horizons. And you'll be able to reduce the overall anxiety and stress that arises from conflicts and naturally stressful sittuations! Lots of benefits all around!

How to promote Alternative Thinking

Whether you want to bring alternative thinking to your workplace, to a school lecture or even to a discussion between your group of friends, there are some techniques that have shown a lot of success and that will help you generate different, more creative and sometimes better solutions. Let’s go through some examples:

Visualize the conflict from afar

A common thing most of are told whenever we must deal with a conflict with someone else is to put ourselves in their position and think about how we would feel if we were them. That leads us to empathize and think about the problem in a way we wouldn’t if we only considered our point of view.

And that mindset can be applied in problem solving in other areas. By putting ourselves as an outside viewer and trying to visualize the problem from afar, we may be able to put aside some biases we may have, maybe even let go of some emotions that may get in the way and think of the problem in a way we hadn’t thought before, usually more positive.

Brainstorming

This one you have probably heard of already; brainstorming consists of gathering in a group and giving ideas spontaneously and without any inhibition to help solve a problem. It focuses on quantity over quality so you will end up with several bad ideas but that is fine because odds are some great ones will probably show up too.

Mood boards

A mood board is a type of visual presentation or ‘collage’ consisting of images, text, and samples of objects in a composition.

(Wikipedia, 2022)

This is usually used by designers and other jobs that require a visualization of the problem, it is useful not only to show other people what you are thinking of but also to help you look at your thoughts from a different perspective.

Short and Long-term solutions

Because not every idea you may find will be a perfect solution for the problem, it may drag on longer than expected. And that requires you to have alternatives and plans for different scenarios. So why not plan for those beforehand? It will make your life easier and less stressful when those scenarios come up.

All done? Let's do some exercises!

References

ExploringYourMind. (2021, July 10). The Characteristics of Alternative Thinking. Exploring Your Mind. https://exploringyourmind.com/the-characteristics-of-alternative-thinking/

Fauxels. (2019, October 22). Women Standing beside Corkboard [Photograph]. Pexels. https://images.pexels.com/photos/3184296/pexels-photo-3184296.jpeg?cs=srgb&dl=pexels-fauxels-3184296.jpg&fm=jpg

Fenceroy, E. (2011). Minimizing Conflict through Restorative Conferencing. Amsterdam University Press.

Mood board. (2022, February 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_board

Sowunmi, D. G., II. (2018, March 8). Beyond Yes vs No – Alternative Thinking for Conflict Resolution. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beyond-yes-vs-alternative-thinking-conflict-dayo-sowunmi-ii/

Supplementary Materials

Exercises