Thinking should be a law

(You have the power to enact a single law. What would it be?http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/daily-prompt-law/)

I thought about all kinds of noble answers to this query like, everyone should have to love each other, everyone should forgive each other, blah, blah, blah.

While this would be great, I’m not dense.  It just isn’t going to happen. Not in this world. But then I thought, maybe there’s a way to accomplish all the love and forgiveness part through the backdoor.

So for me, I’d love to make it a law that everyone should really “think” before making decisions.  I am quite convinced most people don’t even know how to think. They “think” they do (good pun, huh?). But good thinking requires putting aside one’s own preconceived ideas and what other people think and do your own thinking.

We are bombarded with so many words, the constant texts, tweets, e-mails, twenty-four hour news, that we erroneously adopt those views and assume we’ve thought it all through when all we’ve really done is absorb other people’s thoughts.  Then we make decisions based on what we’ve heard not what we’ve ourselves have thought. We simply regurgitate.

I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that lack of analytical, quality thinking is behind the dumb mistakes we see friends and families make. Think about your own life. Wouldn’t you agree that your biggest mistakes have come because you really didn’t think things through?

Thinking is a skill. It needs to be rehearsed and practiced just like any other skill. We don’t do it, of course, because first of all, we don’t take the time and secondly, because we think we already know how. One only has to look at one’s own actions to know this isn’t true. You might want to read about one of my more non-thinking moments here. 

I’m all for intuition and think there are certainly occasions we can trust our intuition and at times should trust that before we trust our thinking. But that’s rare. Usually reserved for crisis situations. 

Many tomes have been written on how to think. John Maxwell and M. Scott Peck have authored some excellent books on this subject.The best place to begin is simply ask yourself this question anytime you proffer an opinion, “Is this what I really think?”

So for today the universal law is “Think, people!”

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/daily-prompt-law/