Harvey Segler - Critical Thinking: Powerful Strategies That Will Make You Improve Decisions And Think Smarter

Critical thinking is a concept that is intimidating to a lot of people. As soon as they hear the word critical, their mind goes to somewhere intense and above their level. When you combine that with thinking, you cause a lot of people to shy away from the concept altogether.

There are a lot of ideas and premonitions that surround the concept of critical thinking, but while the prejudices range from a bunch of science geeks surrounding a table in white lab coats to politicians debating the laws of the country, the phrase itself has a simple meaning.

Critical thinking is defined as: The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Confused? Dont be. This is merely a lot of large words to describe what is really a very simple concept. Simple in practice, that is, because you could be thinking about anything, whether that be a faster way to get to work in the morning, or something as difficult as curing cancer.

As intimidating as this concept sounds, it is really quite simple when it comes to the practice of it.

Critical thinking is a combination of two separate acts:

Absorbing Information

Putting that information to good use

This is so much more than just reading facts, or watching a documentary, or even wishing that you could do this better or that better. There is a difference between seeing something and absorbing it.

Naturally, we are inclined to see something, then forget about it. Sure, we might hang on to a bit of interesting information here and there, but it is unusual for anyone to take in the world and process it in their minds in a useful sort of way.

We would all rather wow our friends with something we heard or read as opposed to actually learning something useful and putting that knowledge to good work in our day to day lives.

Then again, there are many out there that do want to learn. They want to be able to read and retain, then apply that to their life in a way that is actually useful to them in a variety of ways.

Critical thinking goes hand in hand with independent thinking. If you are a critical thinker, you are able to think for yourself, and form your own opinions. You are able to take in a subject or a situation, evaluate the facts, and draw your own conclusions.

These conclusions may or may not match with what other people have decided, but that isn t anything that you concern yourself with. You know what you saw, and you know how you feel about it. As a result, you are independent and believe what you believe regardless of what others are saying.

This isn t saying that the other people are wrong, it is merely saying that you are able to make your own opinions, and stand by them. There is nothing at all wrong with agreeing with other people, and there isn t anything wrong with disagreeing.

You may be surprised to find out how many critical thinkers there are in the world, they are just good at what they do.

There are a lot of independent thinkers out there, but not many people realize that they are. If you stop and think about it for a second. There is someone behind every ad campaign, and someone behind all of the elections. When you are talking to a salesman that is trying to sell you his own product, or when you see the rise of a new social empire.

These may not feel like they are independent, especially when you see all of the people that are getting on board, but what you have to remember is that there is a free thinker behind it all, and that person is telling everyone else what to think. The problem for the rest of the world is that these people are good at telling others what to think, and it isn t long before you have an entire group that is only doing what they are told, because they are told to think it.

What our goal is here is to teach you how to take in a situation and form your own opinion from that situation, regardless of what that opinion may be.

Now, you may find this scary, or you could find it exciting. We want you to be able to think for yourself on any topic. In fact, we want the entire world to be able to think for itself.

There are tons of people out there that don t care what happens on this planet. They go through their lives day in and day out being spoon fed whatever it is society wants to tell them, with little thought of ever doing anything better, or anything at all, for that matter.

Then there are those that aren t happy just going with the flow. They know that there is something better in life, and that they have the ability to get it, they just don t know how.

It is to these people that this book is directed. We are going to explore what it takes to absorb information, and show you ways that you can then apply what you learn to your life. It doesn t matter what you are learning, or what you wish to do with this information.

It is a method that you need to learn, and in the chapters to come we are going to go through the steps that it is going to take for you to learn that information.