Lessons of a divergent thinker and being locked out

Last week was a bit of a crazy week, I had scheduled way too many things, but hey that’s life.  I had just hung up the phone, and was running out the door to go and pick up some more seizure medication for our dog, I grabbed my wallet, car keys, and walked out the door. As the door closed behind me I realized that I had just locked myself out of the house.  While it was a gorgeous day, I did not have two hours to wait until my husband got home from work.

I drove to the vet, picked up the pills and decided that I would swing by a friends house, to get a spare key, my fingers were crossed that they were home. ( did I forget to mention I didn’t have my phone with me either?) While driving I was thinking about how I was going to get into the house if they weren’t home.

You see, I lock myself out of the house a lot, I chalk this up to being a really great daydreamer, and well you just can’t be great at everything.

We’ve lived in our current house for 6 years. The first few times that I locked myself out, I was able to find something in the yard, a piece of plastic from a potted plant container, a plant label, or something of that sort and use it to pick the lock and get in through the back door. Well after I mastered this a few times, we realized how easy it would be for someone else to break into the house, so we fixed it.

Now that I couldn’t pick the lock, when I was locked out, I needed another plan. We had an AC unit in a window on our first floor. I managed to push the AC unit out of the window, and climb in through the window. Not only did we not use that unit, but once again, I demonstrated how easy it would be for someone to get into the house. A few other times, I managed to jiggle some windows open, but if you’re seeing the pattern, each time I broke into the house,  my husband would make adjustments, so that it was harder to break in. While I was doing an awesome job at securing our home, it was getting harder and harder to get into the house when I locked myself out.

So this round, I knew that there was no way that I could get in on the first floor. So as I drove, I remembered that there was a window on the second floor that was cracked open. I could go to the hardware store, buy a really tall ladder, and crawl in through the window. ( my husband has been wanting a ladder to get onto the roof with anyway) Luckily it didn’t have to come to this , our friends were home and they passed over the spare key.

Lessons of a divergent thinker, and being locked out.

1. I was able to use divergent thinking skills to break into the house over and over again. Strong thinking skills can help you to solve problems that don’t have a clear answer, or  make you a stellar criminal.  (click to tweet) ( I”m just kidding about the criminal part.)

2. Divergent thinking will help you to make sure that it’s hard to break into your house. Or you could just invite me over, lock me out, and watch to see how I get in. And yes, I have broken into friends houses.

Maybe you don’t lock yourself out of your house as much as I do. For your sake, I hope that you don’t. To learn more about creativity and divergent thinking, listen to the FREE webinar.