Today I want to introduce you to a simple, practical way to get closer to your Inner Core — one that I have found exceptionally useful in my own leadership journey — the power of thought experiments.
Here’s an excerpt from my book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact, that reveals how I used a thought experiment to deepen my understanding of someone I greatly admire and explore a value I hold dear:
“When I first started to study Mother Teresa, I found myself deeply inspired by her commitment to serving the poorest among the poor. But I also learned that she had consorted at times with people of disrepute, such as a banker convicted of a crime and a dictator. I wondered why she was not more discriminating in whom she engaged with for her cause. Then I constructed a thought experiment. I visualized that I was traveling in a remote country with a loved one. Our car meets with an accident, and my loved one is seriously injured. Her life is in danger as she bleeds by the side of the road. There is no help in sight. One car passes by on the road, and despite our entreaties it does not stop. Nor do the next ten. The twelfth car I try to wave down stops to help us. I am overwhelmed with relief. Then I suddenly notice that the driver of the vehicle is a corrupt dictator I have long been critical of.
What would I do in that moment? Would I ask him to leave, because I have judged him to be a bad person? Or would I jump at his offer to help, thank him for doing so, and focus on getting my loved one to the nearest hospital? I realized that this was probably what Mother Teresa had experienced. Her loved ones were the street people that most of the world had abandoned like those eleven cars that I had imagined passing my dying loved one. So whoever offered help, she received it with gratitude and without judgment. Her business was not to investigate their lives or support their agenda; it was to attract love, care, and support for the people on the sidewalks that most of us had chosen to pass by.”
Thought experiments do not require much from you: you don’t have to wait for life to grant a certain experience to you, nor do you need to enroll in an expensive degree program in a college. It is a free resource each of us has within us — you just have to formulate your hypothesis, use your creativity to construct the right thought experiment in your mind, and finally, run through the experiment while watching what inner perceptions arise.
For more examples of thought experiments I’ve found helpful in life, here’s a two-part article I wrote for Psychology Today:
What is a simple thought experiment you can conduct for yourself to deepen your understanding of a value or quality that you hold dear?
Warmly,
Hitendra
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