Schools teach convergent thinking, finding one right answer. Real problems need divergent thinking, generating many solutions. When you're stuck, you're seeing one wall instead of dozens of ways around it.
And what are your choices if someone puts a gun to your head? What are you talking about? You do what they say or they shoot you! Wrong! You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one, or you call their bluff, or you do any one of 146 other things! There's two types of problem solving in life. There's convergent, which is what they teach you at school. There's lots of variables and there's one correct answer. And there's divergent thinking, which is that there's many correct answers to a single problem. Most of life is divergent solutions, not convergent solutions. So for example, if I said, how many uses of a brick can what can you think of? Somebody who has a convergent process would only say, "Uh, bricks only build buildings." But somebody who has a divergent thinking process would think, "Okay, well, I could use it as a doorstop. I could use it as a paperweight. I could spray paint it gold and make it a trophy. I could drill holes into it and use it as a potted plant and put some dirt inside of it. I could use it for a pathway to walk on." There's so many different uses of a brick, but the people who struggle in life only see one way out, and they see it as a brick wall in front of them.
