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Five Steps to Always Think for Yourself

We all have the freedom of thought and will and no one, no matter how eloquent or politically correct, can take that from us unless we allow it.

I’ve written in the past that there are obstacles to living a creative life.  The primary three obstacles are:

  1. Not thinking for oneself
  2. Emotional wounds
  3. Excessive busyness

We all have struggled with these to certain degrees  but each one of these can greatly hinder our creative fire, they can cover over our creative abilities and cause us to not be able to create as we were designed to.

The first obstacle (not thinking for oneself) is a doozy. This concerns me as I see it seemingly expanding. I see this in almost every area of life, from all walks of life, no one is exempt from this stumbling stone, those who think for themselves are few and far between.

Be it politics (and all the topics being  politicized), religion, handling money, healthcare issues, school systems,  any difficult debate on any topic, we are better off if we have thought it through on our own rather than empowering other people to think for us.  Not thinking is usually a guarantee at getting deceived.

I want to share a 5-step process which can ensure that we can always think for ourselves. I’ll name this process at the end.  Everyone reading this post can begin to think for themselves by following five steps as they approach any difficult question or topic.

  1. Do some learning on your topic first: study what other people are saying on your question, study the facts, if someone feels strongly in a certain direction, try to find opposing opinions.  Look for intellectually honest people, not partisan non-thinkers. To do this well we mustn’t accept anyone’s word at face value, suspend all trust for the moment, for the sake of thinking for yourself. Take no one’s word for anything at step in the process.
  2. Create two or more theories of your own: theories about a solution or answer to the question, they may match closely the existing two sides of a debate or they may be wildly different from any other side.  Create your own idea that you think makes sense and suspend any tendency to take a side for the moment if only for the sake of thinking for yourself.
  3. Test your theories based on reality, based on the laws of physics or based on what you know to be true. Testing of theories can be done with almost anything. Science questions are the easiest to test because of observable experiments.   Look into the popular sides to a question and explore how their hypothesis were tested, look into if they were tested at all. At this stage do not trust anything that has not been tested and demonstrate-able.  If people say its been tested and here are the results don’t trust them unless you can see for yourself.  This is a time of intentional doubt of anything unseen.
  4. Study results, if you are looking at other people’s tests, what assumptions have they made. What assumptions are they hiding? What assumptions might you be making? State clearly all assumptions.
  5. Draw YOUR conclusion, this is the moment where we get to decide on our own what we think about a topic.  This is the moment when we start to think for ourselves.  This process can become rapid second nature over time. As I’ve grown older I’ve learned when to trust and when to not trust people, regardless of their position, intelligence and authority.  I’ve learned to spot unspoken or hidden assumptions a mile away and expose them, sometimes they are terrible assumptions, to the point of deception.

Too many people refuse to think for themselves these days, I’m shocked to hear people who are supposed advocates for science do and openly discourage people to think for themselves.  Science has taken a celebrity/ politics dominated turn away from its roots. Politics has hijacked our scientific mental processes.  Much of the scientific community has become a political battering ram for a minority of non-thinkers.

By following the above 5 steps we can begin to think for ourselves on every topic and not be pushed or pulled around by deceptive or foolish people… no matter how eloquent or well groomed they look on TV.

If you haven’t noticed yet these topics were taken from a popular process from generations past. These process steps were taken from the scientific method. Remember that?

In what areas have you seen people refuse to think for themselves?

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Secret Tips to Thinking Like a Scientist…and why you would want to

Scientists enjoy a special place in society, I think that sometimes television pushes an unquestionable persona for scientists.  The truth is scientists are just like everyone else in society.  They struggle with the same issues, the same frustrations, they have the same political leanings and conflicts. So this “know everything” persona I think is a well constructed fantasy.

A good scientist is a professional learner.  Science is a learning technique, not a group of unquestionable elites or opinionated professors. A good scientist is a benevolent pursuer of knowledge who learns, teaches and then creates useful things and understanding with his/her knowledge.

Non-scientists can learn to use the tool of science to gain understanding and to even create new things by understanding the following four secret tips.  I call these secret only because you wont learn most of  these by listening to societal ideals of the scientist and if you’re not a practitioner of science you may not think of these.

  1. Respectfully question everything, we are becoming too trusting in this society, especially of government and of scientists.  It is ok to challenge people when they try to persuade you to something.   Even the most intelligent people in the world do not know far more than they do know and they often make bad assumptions.  Start to challenge people, start to look for assumptions and respectfully call people out on them.  Start to challenge what is taught, this is healthy if its done not a in a rebellious defiant way but in a curious learning way. If a person can not explain something then chances are they don’t really understand it.
  2. Begin to research, other people have learned and have documented a great deal of knowledge, choose your topic and start researching, compile a note-book on a topic and start to collect information.
  3. Realize that anyone can learn by experimenting:  Experimentation is a powerful process of learning new things, we don’t always need to be taught new things by other people.  We can press into the unknown and create our own knowledge. Identify a problem that you or others are facing, develop several hypothesis as to what is causing the problem or issue and what might solve it, then determine to test the hypothesis and try to prove or disprove them.
  4. Start Your Experiments and Pay Attention: After you start experimenting pay close attention, there is much to be learned by observation. Enjoy the process of learning and don’t get too uptight about it.

Why Would You Want to Do this:

Simply put; a lot of the information out there to solve our problems or to understand reality is just not reliable.

For example, a great deal of the medical community in the US is based on medical science alone.  There are other health care sciences that may be a much better solution to your medical problem. However for financial and often political reasons most of the time only medicine (chemicals) are pushed as the solution which often only mask symptoms.

Another example, a child may be struggling with learning, the public school may or not be able to help this child, what often happens is the parent just trustingly listens to the counsel of a misguided administrator, takes the child to a doctor who diagnoses a syndrome then medicates.  When all the child really needed was special attention from a parent or loving teacher.

I could give dozens of other examples that drive me nuts however my main point is don’t just accept what is fed to you as your solution, become a learner, if at all possible experiment for yourself, research for yourself, you might find that you can solve your problems in a better way by just thinking like a scientist rather than like a trusting child. Of course I am not suggesting you experiment with medicine, I am suggesting however that we take it upon ourselves to understand and sometimes experiment as a means of learning.

Remember to teach as you go to help others benefit from your knowledge.

How do you think like a scientist? leave comment below

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