Judy M. Chartrand - Now Youre Thinking!: Change Your Thinking...Revolutionize Your Career...Transform Your Life

Change Your Thinking...
Revolutionize Your Career...
Transform Your Life

Judy Chartrand
Stewart Emery
Russ Hall
Heather Ishikawa
John Maketa

Vice President, Publisher: Tim Moore
Associate Publisher and Director of Marketing: Amy Neidlinger
Editorial Assistant: Pamela Boland
Senior Marketing Manager: Julie Phifer
Assistant Marketing Manager: Megan Colvin
Cover Designer: Alan Clements
Managing Editor: Kristy Hart
Project Editor: Betsy Harris
Copy Editor: Karen Annett
Proofreader: Sheri Cain
Senior Indexer: Cheryl Lenser
Interior Designer: Nonie Ratcliff
Compositor: Nonie Ratcliff
Manufacturing Buyer: Dan Uhrig

2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Publishing as FT Press
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458

FT Press offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales. For more information, please contact U.S. Corporate and Government Sales, 1-800-382-3419, .

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing August 2011

ISBN-10: 0-13-269013-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-269013-3

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Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Now youre thinking : change your thinking revolutionize your career transform
your life / Judy Chartrand ... [et al.].
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-13-269013-3 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Critical thinking. 2. Problem solving. 3. Decision making. I. Chartrand, Judy Marie.
BF441.N69 2012
153.42dc22
2011012752

Dedicated to the men and women of the armed forces
at home and abroad, with thanks for their commitment
and sacrifices...and their sound and careful thinking
in trying situations.

The authors wish to thank all the participants in the story for sharing their time and memories. We also thank the folks at the FT Press for their support and encouragement: Megan Colvin, Betsy Harris, Timothy C. Moore, and Amy Neidlinger, as well as Karen Chiang, Chad Fife, and Breanne Potter-Harris from the Pearson TalentLens Group.

Judy Chartrand is a recognized thought leader in the areas of critical thinking and career development. Chartrand works as a consulting Chief Scientist with Pearson. As a psychologist, Chartrand has helped hundreds of clients increase their personal and career satisfaction. She frequently speaks at national and international conferences and has published more than 50 articles and books. Chartrand lives in Minnesota with her husband and has two grown children.

Stewart Emery is coauthor of the international bestsellers Success Built to Last and Do You Matter?: How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company. He has a lifetime of experience as an entrepreneur, creative director, corporate culture consultant, and executive coach. He has led workshops and seminars and delivered keynotes all over the world.

Russ Hall is author of fourteen books and coauthor of numerous other books. He has also had short stories, essays, and articles published in a wide array of media and has received several awards.

Heather Ishikawa is the National Sales Director for Pearson TalentLens. Ishikawa has extensive experience in architecting corporatewide, assessment-based leadership development initiatives. Ishikawa has delivered workshops to hundreds of leaders on the topics of critical thinking, leadership, teambuilding, communication, and change management. She lives in California with her husband and two children.

John Maketa is the Director of Strategic Partnerships for Pearson TalentLens. Maketa is a dynamic leader in enterprise growth, developing bold and creative strategic alliances that catapult global performance and profit. Maketa is known throughout the learning and development industry as a major connector who is able to strategically align initiatives for parties on both sides of the table with unparalleled financial and professional success. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and son.

Change your thinking...revolutionize your career...transform your life might seem like an extravagant benefit to claim for a book. However, if you do change the way you thinkand develop the ability to think in a manner that supports the experiences and accomplishments that matter to youyour life will be transformed.

It is literally true that you feel the way you do because you think the way you do. To be in a loving and nurturing relationship requires patterns of thinking that create and make this quality of relationship possible. To experience satisfying professional success requires the ability to think in a way that will bring you this. Steve Jobs epitomizes the fact that successful people think differently. Everything you want in your life demands the thinking styles that make it so. Anything you are experiencing that you dont want is because your thinking style cannot bring you what you do want and instead perpetuates your situation.

If you accept that this is, in fact, the case (and it is), the question becomes can you actually learn to think in a way that brings you the life you hunger for, or did you have to be born with a mind that was hardwired for highly effective thinking? Yes, you can learn to be a highly effective thinker. And no, research reveals that nobody is born hardwired to be able to do this. Highly effective thinkers are made and not born. This is a major discovery. We have learned that the wherewithal for you to live a wonderful life is an ability you develop in the process of living. You can do it, and yes, we can help.

We have also learned over the years of supporting people in the realization of their dreams that information is mostly overrated. With the advent of the Internet, there is no shortage of information. Any of us with an Internet-enabled device has universal access to information overload. We have seen very little improvement in the quality of the human experience as a result. Do you feel emotionally more connected in this brave new information age as a result of trying to consume more information? Deep inside, do you feel more confident that you can produce the results in the world and your life that really matter to you as you attempt to devour one more morsel of information? Is information feeding your soul? Although your mileage may vary, most of the people we ask answer, Not so much.

So we have to conclude that there is little, if any, transformational power in the information. Transformation requires an experience that moves the human heart. Once upon a long time ago, certainly way, way back before the Internet began, or even the printed word, the kind of learning we are talking about here took place at the feet of the storyteller. With this in mind, we begin this book with a story of transformation that we hope will move your human heart.

In the story, you will meet a team of people who take it upon themselves to save the life of a little girl. Her name is Amenah and at the beginning of the story, she is living and dying in a sheepherding village in Iraq. If the process of her dying is going to be transformed to become her experience of being truly alive, a great deal of first-class thinking will have to be done by an extended group of people from a village in Iraq to a hospital in Tennessee.