I’ve always been interested in why we think the way we do.
And, perhaps more importantly, what happens when we realise we don’t have to keep thinking in the same way.
I’m Emma Kirkpatrick, founder of Elevate & Progress and creator of Think Differently.
My work today brings together two things that might initially seem quite different: helping people make sense of their thinking, and helping organisations make sense of complex information.
At the heart of both is the same idea — clarity changes what becomes possible.
I’ve never had what you might call a conventional career path.
I left school at 16 and joined the Army, an experience that taught me a great deal about resilience, responsibility and what people are capable of when circumstances demand more of them than they think they have to give. What followed was a career that took me through finance, leadership and increasingly complex programmes — eventually including responsibility for England’s £3 billion European Social Fund programme and, more recently, finance leadership within an international development programme working across multiple countries and cultures.
On paper, that might look like a fairly corporate journey. But running alongside it has always been a fascination with people: why we respond differently to the same circumstances, why capable people sometimes doubt themselves, why we repeat patterns we know aren't helping us, and why changing the way we think can change so much more than the thought itself.
That interest became increasingly important through some of my own periods of change and uncertainty. I began exploring personal development more deeply — but also questioning some of it. I found ideas that genuinely changed the way I understood myself and the world around me, alongside others that felt too simplistic for the complexity of real life.
Think Differently grew from that tension.
I wanted to understand what was actually happening beneath the slogans: how perception, memory, reason, imagination, intuition and attention shape the way we experience our lives — and how greater awareness can give us more choice in what we do next.
Elevate & Progress has grown from there.
Not from one perfectly mapped-out plan, but from bringing together things that had been connected for much longer than I realised: curiosity, complexity, communication, personal experience, and a belief that clearer thinking creates possibilities we don't always see when we're standing in the middle of things.
The path here wasn't a straight one
What connects it all
Whether I’m working with an individual who feels stuck, developing an idea through Think Differently, or helping an organisation make sense of something complex, I keep coming back to the same principles.
Clarity matters.
We make better choices when we can see what is actually going on — in our thinking, our circumstances or the information in front of us.
Questions matter.
The right question can uncover an assumption, challenge a familiar perspective or reveal something we hadn't noticed before.
Complexity doesn't need to be simplified out of existence.
Life, people and organisations are complicated. Good thinking isn't about pretending otherwise. It's about finding enough clarity within the complexity to know what to do next.
And people are capable of more change than they sometimes realise.
Not because positive thinking makes difficult things disappear, but because greater awareness gives us more choice in how we respond to them.
For me, that's what Elevate & Progress is really about.