Apparently, thinking has fallen on hard times. With the pressures exerted by modern schedules and constant media intrusions, few people today ever seem to get around to any serious thinking. How often do you find yourself responding to an incident with the question: What were they thinking?
A standard text book for cognitive psychology is titled, Cognition: The Thinking Animal. It seems to be widely understood that thinking is an essential element of our humanity. A closely related concept is referred to as self talk. Here, the idea is communication with oneself, which is largely a thought process and much has been written about the effects of self talk on our lives. What we think is clearly very important.
Productive thinking requires a certain amount of discipline (and discipline has never been a very popular concept). A block of time and a peaceful environment can contribute greatly to productive thinking, but there is much more involved. A major impact on our thinking is our frame of reference or worldview. Wikipedia suggests that a worldview refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it. One of the real challenges to productive thinking is to recognize and challenge our assumptions that are part of our worldview.
Another key element closely related to our worldview is how we determine what is true. Because there are so many voices today who have a vested interest in convincing us that something is true when it is not, the methods we use to test for truth will also greatly affect our thinking. We all make extensive use of “trusted sources” to gather information, but determining what to trust is extremely challenging.
One of the ways to refine our thoughts and ideas is to discuss them with others. Often the collaboration between several people with different points of view will result in ideas none of the participants would have developed on their own.
Some time ago, I wrote a 3 page essay on an element of thinking, which I referred to as managing my mind, which provides additional background.
How important to you is your individual thinking?
What approaches have you used to improve the effectiveness of your thinking?
How important is it to you to refine your thoughts by discussion with others?
mindin' my mind 