Ben Martin suggests playing chess as a way to develop integrative thinking (becoming more aware of how one move will play out three or four moves later). Good suggestion, Ben! So far, I have come up with two things that have worked for me:
Meditation. By sitting still and focusing only on your breathing, you start to become aware of how many thoughts are actually going through your head at one time. The only way to get them out of the way (so you can focus on your breathing) is to acknowledge them. The more you can acknowledge at one time, the more still the mind becomes. It’s a strange paradox between seeing nothing and seeing everything and I find it clarifying. It can be really frustrating at times, by the way, but anytime you are strengthening a muscle, there is effort and temporary discomfort involved.
Mediation. I’m not repeating myself—that’s mediation (without the “t”), or facilitating a dispute resolution process between two parties. I come from the conflict resolution field, and, like architecture, you have to see the whole system to do work on the parts. When you mediate a dispute between two parties, you have to fight the way our brains have been conditioned, which is to find the answer quickly. We are taught to use our brains like a knife, slicing things away so you can get to the core and solve the problem. A mediator makes connections, opens up new paths of inquiry, and expands the field of options before helping the parties to make choices.