I recently read about a technique to help with negative thoughts and realised it could be a great enabling technique in research too…

The idea is to imagine yourself as the driver of a bus. Make each thought that you have (on a subject) a different passenger on the bus… observe their behaviour, knowing that you are in charge… watch the passengers get off the bus and new ones get on…

So, we can iamgine how useful the technique is if you are troubled with negative thoughts – it can help create perspective, and give back control thinking too.

But this could be a really useful tool to help people articulate the range of thoughts they have on an issue, and also to encourage talking about suppressed or withheld thoughts.

As social beings, we are trained at withholding what we think in order to harmonize with others. We also fail to ‘listen’ to our own thoughts lots of the time too. These withheld or semi-formed views affect our decision making and behaviour, so accessing these unspoken thoughts (within ethical limits of course) is really useful for researchers.

All aboard the Mindbus for a bit of enabled thinking!