If you don’t develop the practice of critical thinking, you will not rise up in your personal and professional life to that you are capable of.
It’s important in today’s world to practice the art of critical thinking.
You’re being bombarded by the media, Internet and in many other ways to think and act in certain ways. Unless you employ the skills of critical thinking, we run the risk of settling for incorrect or biased ideas and to be led on a path that will keep us from success.
When you practice the art of critical thinking, you’re using the power of reasoning. The rule of reasoning is that you have to use is logic. Scientific reasoning is also a part of the critical thinking process. A thorough knowledge of the issue or situation is imperative when using reasoning as part of critical thinking.
Practice makes perfect with critical thinking. You can look at recipes in a cookbook all day long, but unless you practice what the book is attempting to teach, you’ll never be a chef. Theoretically, you may know what goes into making a delicious meal, but unless you put that theory into practice, you won’t really understand the process.
Next, you should have the correct attitude when practicing the art of critical thinking. For example, if you make mistakes and then don’t analyze them to find out where you went wrong, you won’t learn from the critical thinking process.
Also, basing your ideas and judgments on your biases or past thinking won’t move you any closer to becoming a critical thinker. You must always base the attitudes on knowledge rather than old beliefs and habits.
You should have a plan in place to practice critical thinking and then follow through with the plan. Know your areas of weakness so that you can concentrate on realistic ways to overcome them and avoid discouragement. Never accept an idea or passing thought on face value. Evaluation should always follow the thought process and you should be able to dissect the information given and probe for deeper information.
When practicing the art of critical thinking, it’s a good thing to doubt everything you read and hear. Before you believe anything, check the source and decipher if that resource might have prejudices or may not be as knowledgeable about the subject as he would like you to believe.
The bottom line to practicing critical thinking successfully is to always look for evidence to back up an assumption and belief. Try to put past beliefs and ways of thinking aside and concentrate on the evidence before you.
Critical thinking is all about having a clean slate when you begin thinking about an issue or situation.
