Decisions in Life, and Often, Critical Thinking

¶ … decisions in life, and often, critical thinking is required in order to fully understand the different issues at hand. Complex decisions tend to be those with life-altering consequences. I tend to set big goals for myself, and it requires some critical thinking to do this. For example, I must look at the overall objectives. I posed a number of questions to make this decision -- who am I? And what do I want from life? For me, these sorts of questions were central to setting out a plan.

I wrestled for a long time with my plan once I thought I had one. Part of me wants to act more on emotion, using gut feelings, but life is complicated and a little bit of analysis can help ensure that the strategies I undertake are the ones that will take me to my goals. Then after thinking about all that, I asked myself why I was looking at life as the pursuit of a goal, rather than a journey that only really ends when you die.

A goal-driven life could have me sitting there when I'm old with nothing left to do, which would be really sad. Educators study the issue of critical thinking in order to help their students think critically about issues, and not just regurgitate responses, and certainly not to take things they see and hear at face value (Popil, 2011).

One of the things that I have realized is that critical thinking is not just something you are taught, a tool to be used like a hammer whenever you decide to pick it up. Critical thinking is just how you think. Studying critical thinking is becoming self-aware. I, personally, have learned about my own thought processes. They were always there, and for the most part they were always critical, and I think that is the case for most people.

Some are better thinkers, some are worse, but when you give people a level of self-awareness about their own thought processes you provide them with an opportunity to see where they are being critical, and where they are not. This provides room for improvement. I can see the critical thinking processes that I use now, since I have become more adept at identifying them. So trying to make a decision about my own life pathway, I went through this substantial thought process.

I turned over different options and perspectives in my head -- it was not just critical but there was a lot of creativity involved as I brainstormed and researched to get a better sense of what might be out there for me. I felt that sometimes you don't know what you want because you haven't been exposed to it yet, or we know what we want but don't want to admit it, Willie Loman style.

Critical thinking can help us to challenge our assumptions, and that was part of the process for me. I had to dig a little deeper about what makes me happy. So when I decided what I wanted my life to look like, I discovered it was a lot less concrete than I had previously imagined -- it was an impressionist palate of states of being, whereas I think before I went through this process it was very specific about jobs, family, and living conditions.

I had, it turned out, started from the conclusion, and when I worked backwards from that I.