Do your Own Thinking!
There is thinking, which everyone does and which is inevitable, and then there is real thinking, which is everyone does not do, and which is not inevitable. Thinking is an art, it is an education, it is a discipline that requires skills and competencies. All that’s required for inevitable thinking is a functional brain on the top of your shoulders, one that is not brain-dead. Nearly everyone has that and so nearly everyone “thinks.” Yet because there are numerous non-thinking states, you can have a brain and not use it. There are 7 kinds of non-thinking: automatic thinking, reactive, borrowed, superficial, agenda, “knowing,” and expectant.
Non-Thinking
Imagine that-a working brain which is not engaged so it actually and truly thinks! The state of non-thinking is not only possible, it is far, far too the case with most people. Why is that? Because thinking is hard work. If you have ever struggled to understand a subject in school, with reading a difficult passage in a book, or the mechanics of how something works, and afterward felt exhausted, mentally drained, and if you rubbed your heads to ease the tension you feel, then you know that sometimes, thinking can require a lot of cognitive effort.
Famous people have often spoke about the effort of thinking. For example Peter F. Drucker once said: “Thinking is very hard work. And management fashions are a wonderful substitute for thinking.” John Dewey wrote a book at the beginning of the 20th century, How We Think, and in it he defined thinking in a way that still shocks most people: “The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion, or doubt.” It is the surprises and disappoints of life that we don’t like or can’t figure out, otherwise known as “problems,” that trigger us to think. No wonder some people do not like to think and do whatever they can to avoid thinking!
Fashions
Not only do senior managers in organizations substitute “management fashions” for thinking, there’s another substitute you should know about. Carl Jung wrote, “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.” Now we are back to non-thinking-making a reactionary and prejudicial judgment rather than thinking. Then you don’t have to put in the work of actually thinking something through.
When Albert Einstein thought about thinking, he noted something which many of us have said about schools. Namely, schools should not only focus on what to think, but how to think. Most do not. Einstein said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” True thinking is not inevitable, you have to learn how to do it. You have to learn how to use your mind to think, and thereby become mindful, that is, consciously aware and alive.
No-one can do it for you
A fascinating thing about thinking is that you have to do it, no one can do it for you. Now it is true that you can learn from someone and take on his thoughts and think her thoughts after her. Because of this, we all can benefit from the quality thinking of those who came before us and we do not have to start from ground zero. I can read from Aristotle. Then, what he learned and discovered thousands of years ago, I can think those same thoughts, try them on, and make them mine. We call that learning. It is the process by which I can come to understand what someone else has already figured out or discovered. But again, you have to do the thinking to transfer those thoughts into your neurology, nervous systems and brain. No one can do that for you. Nor will those thoughts get inside you by osmosis.
We can also learn to be excellent thinking partners to each other
This was the discovery of Vygotsky when he described how a more informed person can scaffold the learning of a less informed person thereby accelerating the development of the learner. But again, the learner has to do his or her own thinking.
What happens when you do your own thinking?
Obviously they learn. You come to know more and when you integrate that learning, you can do more. You can become more skilled and effective in doing things, more self-confident, more independent, more able to stand on your own two feet. You become empowered.
As you use your mind to think and develop your thinking powers and skills, you becomes more self-determining and able to discern truth from falsehood. And all of that unleashes your potentials.
Tolerant and Accepting
Now you know what we are striving to do at The Coaching Centre. As we teach the Meta-Model, the Meta-Programs model, the Meta-States model, etc., our larger objective is to enable people to access their ultimate power-their thinking powers. This makes people more intelligent, more rational, and more informed. And because we want everyone to do this, it facilitates everyone in becoming more democratic, more respectful, and more tolerant and accepting of others.
Critical Thinkers
In enabling people to become excellent critical thinkers and creative thinkers-we want and encourage people to do their own thinking. This downplays the need to conform your thinking to anyone else’s. This makes redundant any need to have a creed and force people to submit their minds to only the “politically correct” thinking. In this way, we work to develop thinkers who can engaged in healthy conversations, debates, and dialogues.
They do not have to agree, in fact, if people are truly thinking, they probably will not agree. There will be lots of differences. That is not only okay, it is to be expected. It is desirable.
The professions that we focus on and develop at The Coaching Centre are thinking professions: coaches, consultants, therapists, leaders, managers, etc. To be highly effective at any of these professions-you have to be a clear, accurate, precise, practical, creative, and critical thinker.
You have to know how to challenge ill-formedness in linguistic structures (the Meta-Model). You have to know how to challenge the cognitive distortions, biases, and fallacies. You have to be able to detect and work with thinking and perceiving patterns. Is it a lot?
Yes, you bet it is and at The Coaching Centre we have lots of training programs to make this a reality. Here’s to you doing your own best thinking!
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