One of the most frequent patterns limiting ideas is to opt for something that we know.

By following a pattern of how things are done in our culture, it is culture or groupthink that limits our choice.

By taking up an activity we’ve been doing in the past, it becomes the limit of our imagination.

By relying on the way we’ve been doing things in the past, it is our experience that we choose to limit our project. This is also true for the cases in which we do things in the exact opposite way than before. That’s because the opposite of something still contains the pattern of the original.

While all of them may be exactly the right choice, they have the inbuilt problem to limit how we can think about a new project.

They are shortcuts. As we’ve already been there before they reduce visibility onto the existing options. It’s a safe journey, one of stepping into the known unknown.

The hard work consists of seeing that they exist.