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Gidday mates! Thanks for being here with me. Let’s start on our path to developing regular healthy thinking habits! We all have days with random thoughts, as well as days of more ordered thinking. While it is good to be exploratory with thoughts, we must have some control with HOW we think. Untamed, rogue thinking slowly weakens the mind, and since life is short—we do not have time to argue. There is only one winner or one loser—it will be either you, or you. The content in my Newsletters will help you develop healthy methods to learn to know WHAT, and especially WHY your thoughts are the way they are. Learning HOW to think matters, not WHAT to think. This will help you organise those thoughts—fundamental for critical thinking. How? Well, while our thoughts hold purpose, some will aid us, but most are hard wired to cause us problems. I’ll let you be the judge of what impact your thoughts have on you. So, we need to learn HOW to see them. As we learn to know where the thoughts and feelings come from, we begin to obtain control over them. This then becomes a: A SUPERPOWER! The result…I promise, will be that you liberate your precious mind. This is what people mean by true empowerment or enlightenment. It is hard for the
world to make your mind dark when you know how to see light. Empowerment cannot solely come from superficial methods, or social and political band-aiding. It starts with you and ends with YOU. So, why should we work on our mind? Because it is what causes us our weaknesses, and enables our successes. Yes, the problems from our history successfully supplied us with our flaws, and assigned our scars, but we don’t have history here to battle with. The only battle which is on offer is with our mind. Become personally successful, and become psychologically and socially successful. INTELLIGENT THINKING: AWARENESS OF THE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND Intelligent thinking is learning how to balance the emotional (subjective), and logical (objective) mind. Scientists are supposed to be trained to do this very well. We need to make sure we keep emotion at bay when reading literature, and analysing data. We must—otherwise our results will be biased, instead driven by emotional and subjective desire, as opposed to universal, and objective good. I often refer to critical thinking as intelligent thinking, as it requires us to draw on intellectual elements of our cognitive ability. Intelligence is required, so we can make reasonable, fair, and rational assumptions about the world. Intelligent thinking is being able to balance the subjective mind (the personal and the emotional) with the objective mind (the external and the logical). The interplay and balance, or lack thereof, between our subjective (emotional) and objective (logical) mind, underpins the majority of misunderstandings in our: relationships communication business interactions community dynamics self-perception
It is the ability to have a perspective, but the self-control to maintain a high-level of emotional composure. It becomes a COGNITIVE GIFT: where you hold your inner, emotional world together, simultaneously holding space to invite multiple perspectives. A follower thought that calling it ‘emotional thinking’ seemed logical, since it is an emotional endeavour, after all. I have reflected on this as it is very much a process of becoming aware of our emotional faculties in order to achieve emotional enlightenment. However, referring to it as intelligent thinking is purposeful and I have decided important. Why? Because it is the least intelligent thinkers, or those who are not at peace with the emotional mind who argue, fight, resist, create disharmony, block knowledge progress, and get disproportionately offended. On the contrary, intelligent thinkers, allow conversation and knowledge to progress with reason, rationality, and impressive emotional awareness. This is what it means to be emotionally intelligent. When you know how to understand both your own, and others’ emotions. Undisciplined, emotional thinking without rationality is one of the major problems we are facing in The Information Revolution. We need to garner control over the information chaos, and respect what logic and order brings. We also need to garner control over what instinct, emotions, perception and feelings bring. Being human is a permanent, an unchangeable part of how we experience the world. Thinking too emotionally, and you risk making the wrong decisions. Think too scientific and logical and you risk becoming robotic and less human. And in a world of AI upon us, we need the human being in the equation to keep us distinct from robots. There is no personal value to thinking like a robot or living in a robotic world where humans no longer behave like humans. We are distinct because of our diverse, subjective emotions. BALANCE! BUT, let us take this challenge on—where we attempt to learn how to balance the two. Once you master the balance of drawing on the subjective when relevant, and the objective when required, you are tapping into your self-owned superpower!!! So, let’s think critically about the topic for today… BUT FIRST, DEFINE IT! First of all, make sure you know the definition. Do not make assumptions! Recently, I was unable to move forward in a conversation because they believed ‘to articulate’ meant to be ‘the most knowledgeable’. The problem– despite being prompted by me, they doubled down on this false assumption. While I was sure I knew the definition, especially since I used to be very inarticulate, I made sure I still took another very close look before I responded. These sorts of early misalignments mean you cannot move forward in a conversation and it will not arrive at an effective result. So, I left it. It only controls us if we choose to participate in it. Do not engage without a mutual or neutral starting point. NOTE: The stakes are hardly ever even or neutral online, particularly on platforms which deliver only short-form content. Thus, these skills are useful person to person during conversation in your REAL world. So, let’s define the subjective and the objective mind: The objective mind is a view of reality that is separate to you. It is external, or looking from the outside in. It includes being logical, rational, reasonable, scientific, methodological.
The subjective mind views reality from personal perception, so, looking from the inside out. It includes biases, judgments, perception, emotions, opinions, imagination, and conscious experience.
How did I gain balance between the two? Having a PhD meant I have had to read a lot of philosophy. In philosophy the distinction between subjective and objective is related to discussions of the nature of reality and truth. To fast track critical thinking, just read philosophy—the only problem, it can be very complicated to understand. But philosophy makes you ask questions about subjective reality and objective truth. Since I have done the work, don’t worry, I will pose those questions for you. THINK Think about what topics you are highly emotional about. Now think about why that may be so. They are often connected to what you perceive to be either a part of your identity, or were a threat to your identity. For example, a brief critical analysis of religion: religious beliefs can be seen as subjective, because they require the presence of consciousness or perception. But most religious, as well as non-religious people require hope, guidance, meaning, purpose, structure, and leadership. So a critical analysis would lead us to think that there is likely to be a biological and psychological element to the need for religion, or at least the need for human beings to hold a basic set of moral values to feel hope and to ensure their survival. You need to be able to know the way your mind operates in order to develop control over it. And you can not accept the easiest answer. Our brains are hard wired to accept the most comfortable answer. For example, many people are quick to accept the belief that all people doing things they perceive to be bad, are due to social constructions. It is too hard to accept that people may be biologically capable of bad things, as a condition of species as opposed to society. Critical thinking holds our thoughts accountable. Know that we are almost always: Know that we can also be: Also know that the way we think has to do with an intersection of our: Biology Psychology Sociology
In critiquing reason (learn more on this via Immanuel Kant, 1781), we have to know that our understanding of the world is shaped by our experiences, and perceptions, and this is what we call subjective knowledge. On the other hand, there are objective truths, these exist independently of our perceptions and we can find these through reason, and logic. Emotions help us make sense of subjective truths which matter to our OWN world, but they do not determine what is objectively true universally. For critical thinking, the relationship between the subjective and objective mind is fundamental but difficult to reconcile. Critical thinkers have learnt to balance the two. So, how can you develop this skill? STEP 1: Know that you are usually reacting based on subjective thought, and emotion FIRST. You need to actively push against this instinct in search for the real truth, if that is what you want. When you stop needing the world to fulfil your subjective emotional needs you are able to accept objective and universal truth. This enables you to not take things personally and be more emotionally in control. Next time you engage in ANY conversation, or when you read ANY idea think: Are my emotions involved here? Why am I feeling upset, angry, annoyed or bothered? What are my personal feelings versus what are the objective facts around this issue? Do I even know much about this topic? Why have a developed this view of this issue?
With healthy thinking habits and becoming a critical thinker, you WILL get that amazing job, make that awesome friend, be that strong leader, become a successful parent, be a good partner and reliable family member. Healthy thinking = healthier life. Stay tuned for the Sunday Synapse, which will be delivered to your inbox every Sunday! Get ready to take on a new week better than you were last week! If it does not bring value to you, just hit the unsubscribe button below. Send me an email to tell me what you think or if you have any ideas you would like to suggest. Until next Sunday, take care. Dr. Esha.
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