Improving Good Thinking

from Foter

In this early part of the New Year improving our thinking is one way to keep growing on our Living More Than OK journey. The quality of our thinking aids in our enjoyment of life and personal successes. Richard Paul and Linda Elders in their book Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life state this of the need for sound thinking: “There is nothing more practical than sound thinking. No matter what your circumstance or goals, no matter where you are, or what problems you face, you are better off if your thinking is skilled. …in every realm and situation of your life, good thinking pays off. Poor Thinking, in turn, inevitably causes problems, wastes time and energy, engenders frustration and pain.” (page 7)

If we look at the problems and difficulties of our lives and are honest we can see where most our negativity can be traced back to faulty thinking. In the Living More Than OK life we want to live more of our time spiraling up to abundant living instead of spiraling down into stagnation and problems. Each of us can find room to improve in our thought lives.
Improving our thinking begins with a choice to continually learn and improve our minds. We need to take time to make time to do things to improve our thinking. Take mental growth breaks during the day or on the weekend. Paul & Elders in the aforementioned book reveal that critical thinkers need to work on building intellectual habits and traits into their thought lives. The traits they mention are: “Intellectual integrity, Intellectual humility, Intellectual sense of justice, Intellectual perseverance, Intellectual fair-mindedness, Intellectual confidence in reason, Intellectual courage, Intellectual empathy, Intellectual autonomy.” (page 19) Look over those terms and first reflect over which areas are you already strong in and which areas do you need to grow in at present time.

How can we grow in these areas? Probably no surprise to you my first response is to tell you to go to your local library and select a book on Critical Thinking. I highly recommend any of the writings by Richard Paul and Linda Elders. Their writings are sound and also practical. There are other good writers on critical thinking but those two are my favorites. My book, Living More Than OK, has one chapter on the need for critical thinking. So this Bookhead is telling you books are one of the best ways to grow your mind and thought life. For reading material you can also go to www.criticalthinking.org and click on their Library tab and read various articles about critical thinking.

Beyond reading you can also search on YouTube or Ted talks for video lectures on thinking and critical thinking. Here is an example of a short video of Richard Paul on thinking from YouTube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNCOOUK-bMQ . You may also want to look into Continuing education courses at local universities and colleges. Find an area of mental curiosity or interest to you personally, and take a course in that subject.

from Foter

Growing in improved good thinking will add value to your life. The process may lessen the number or intensity of problems that you may be facing. By growing our thinking it helps keep the mind open to possibilities and new solutions to adversity and new areas of growth. Give improving your thinking a try in this New Year.

Reflection: Go to the Library link of the critical thinking website http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/index-of-articles/1021/ and read one article of your choosing. Take time to reflect over the message of the article you chose.

Living More Than Ok By Using Critical Thinking Skills

From the time we wake up and debate hitting the snooze button we are thinking. Thoughts our constantly flooding our mind. It could be said even during our sleep the mind is active during our dreams states. How do these thoughts affect our living? Is just ok living affected by just ok thinking? By improving our thinking skills can we move beyond ok to abundant living? That is what I would like to challenge our thinking about this week. How critical thinking can improve our living.

What is Critical Thinking? One of my favorite definitions of it comes from Richard Paul, one of the top researchers and writers about critical thinking. He states, “ Critical Thinking is thinking about your thinking while you are thinking, in order to make your thinking better.” That is a lot of thinking! It means to actively reflect over your thinking analyzing and looking at the logic to improve your thought life. I tell my students I work with that the brain is like a computer and our thinking is like the software programs. Critical thinking is studying over our program of thoughts with the motive to improve our truly personal computer in our head.

The important question is what is the quality of our thinking? Have you ever watched a news story and said to your self – “What were they thinking?”. There are examples of bad thinking all over the media. When I want to get a good laugh out of poor quality thinking I check out Chuck Shepherd’s website News of the Weird. I can laugh at the antics of the results of people’s thinking yet the problem is when I catch myself saying, “what was I thinking?” Those moments are when I especially understand the need for critical thinking – analyzing my thinking to improve it.

Two authors that have spoken so well to the issue of critical thinking are Richard Paul and Linda Elder. One of my favorite books on critical thinking is their Critical Thinking: Tools For Taking Charge of Your Professional Life and Personal Life. In their writing they point out that three main functions of the mind are thinking, ( comparing, judging, analyzing and synthesizing); Feeling, ( happy, sad, depressed, calm, and worried); and wanting, (goals, purposes, values, and motives). Each waking moment our minds are thinking through these areas as we relate to life and our environment. Our thoughts are moving either passively or actively. Critical thinking comes to play as we take the active control of our thoughts. Our thoughts either control us passively by emotionally responding, or we control our thoughts by actively rationally, “thinking about our thinking”

Our life is about the choices we make in our decision process. With each choice there is a consequence and then we make another decision based on that consequence and so on. If we are not critically thinking life happens to us -- sometimes with bad consequences. Maybe even to the level of being in a news story where others look at us and say, “what was he thinking?”. Hopefully not to the level that we appear in News of the Weird! By actively using critical thinking we can have more control over our living, make more positive choices that will bring better results in our lives.
Of course we can’t control everything just by our thinking. Using critical thinking won’t stop a storm from destroying our house or from a illness coming into our life. It won’t stop the affects of other people’s poor quality thinking, whether they are family, friends, or politicians from affecting our personal lives. But the habit of building stronger thinking patterns will help us respond positively and constructively to events and actions that come into our life journey.

Reflection:
Think about your thinking. Are you more active or passive in your thinking? How are you controlling life, rather than letting life control you? Take some time to look over the website www.criticalthinking.org and see if you can gain some helpful insights for your life.