How Do You Think?
Thinking seems to be a simple thing to do and something we do all day and sometimes most of the night for those suffering with insomnia. But thinking is a talent if your intention is to think productively and beyond a surface level of thought processing. Who or what influences your thinking and how to you think to resolution or do you jump off the “think train” with frustration?
Think to Learn
When someone is talking to you and telling you important information, are you thinking about what you are going to say next or thinking to absorb and learn from what that individual is telling you? If you are thinking your own agenda, you probably will not remember the information you needed to know past the end of the conversation. You were thinking to reply not to learn.
I ask my students in the classroom to repeat back to me the instructions for the day’s assignments particularly if they are running their own agenda with their friend sitting next to them. Usually, they cannot tell me and their blabbermouth suddenly turns sheepish because they were caught not think about what I just said.
If you go to a workshop to listen to a speaker virtually or in person, the purpose is to learn and thus become better. But you cannot learn except by thinking about what the speaker is telling you. Thinking about what the speaker is saying is a level above simply passively listening.
Thinking to Resolve
Do you have a “thinking buddy”? I do. I spend a lot of time in the car driving to and from work. It is important that your thinking buddy challenges your position or your particular way of thinking. This helps you to reason out possibilities. It is important to allow yourself to seriously think about different scenarios, options and the outcome of each scenario.
When I was a child, my dad used to tell me to think till my brain hurt. That is actually very good advice if you want to develop your thinking powers so that they work more effectively for you. Do not stop thinking with the first strategy you are thinking of. If you do, your thinking roots will never go below the shallow surface. Think deep and hard and in different directions so that your thinking roots are forced to go deep and explore the unknown.
Thinking as a Brain Exercise.
You may be among the 100s who often wonder is you are slipping into dementia, that is if you are in the geriatric years. Dementia is often the precursor to Alzheimer’s Disease which is one of the cruelest diseases. It leaves your body here, but the brain has taken flight.
I wrote an extensive continuing education course on this very topic and what I discovered in my research is that in a way we have brought this disease on ourselves as the need to remember, and recall has gone away. We do not need to remember phone numbers because they are stored in our smart phones and we simply press a button to call someone.
Aggressive thinking can be a great exercise to stave off this disease as we age. Force your brain to think through situations and different scenarios of those situations and think of the outcomes and decide which one you want to live with.
The Art of Thinking
Thinking is an art which we can develop by requiring our thinking to go beyond the obvious end result or solution. Developing this art form is not an option particularly if we want to keep up with the fast pace of the world we live in. I do not want to lose my capacity to think and think beyond the obvious. If you are an accomplished thinker in one arena, say of technology, then start developing your thinking power in another area, say of astronomy and space. Think about what you know then read, listen to new info to push your thinking to go further with considering the variables.
Remember to think today!!!