Monday, December 29, 2008

Use Your Ability To Reason To Achieve What You Want In Life

By Ray Stendall

The ability to reason is one of the most important of the six intellectual factors. Human beings have to make a volitional choice to use this factor in pursuit of their dreams. All men, women and children have the capacity to think and use reason, however, not everyone does! This is evidenced by the overwhelming percentage of the population who at the age of retirement are dead, broke or still working out of necessity. Isn't it interesting that only 1% to 4% of the population have significant wealth that affords them the time to enjoy everything that this world has to offer at retirement?

The ability to use our reason infers that we can use logic. What does this really mean? To be logical implies that you have the ability to gather, organize and utilize information in a way that furthers your position in life to be happier, healthier and wealthier with people you love. Isn't this the objective?

Let's look a little deeper at the four primary thinking processes. Thinking processes can be: declarative, cumulative, serial, or parallel. The most basic form of logic is to simply declare something. For example if I said: "this is a red car" this would be considered declarative. If you observe children from a very early age they will communicate using declarative statements. They might say something like "That is a big dog."

If now I add more complexity to this statement and say, "this is a red car and it travels quickly." this would be considered cumulative logic. Some individuals mature out of the declarative mode of thinking to cumulative but not everyone.

Now let's add some more complexity: "this is a blue truck and it travels quickly. By traveling quickly and exceeding the speed limit I might get a ticket." Serial thinking is more advanced than declarative or cumulative thinking because it involves linking concepts together.

Now for the most advanced form of thought process let's examine parallel thinking. Parallel thinking involves having multiple serial processes at the same time. Let me give you an example: "This is a red car and it travels quickly. By traveling quickly and exceeding the speed limit I might get a traffic ticket. On the other hand, if I do not make an effort to get to the airport as quickly as possible I will miss my flight." This form of thinking is parallel. It involves being able to look at an idea from multiple viewpoints, to compare and contrast, to find the optimum solution.

All of us exhibit various forms of thought processes. The main question is where do we tend to be most comfortable? When we are relaxed and not under stress how do we communicate? The way you communicate is a direct reflection of the complexity of your thought processes. The complexity of your thought processes is a reflection of the challenges you are trying to overcome to move forward in life. The size of your goals is determined by you. The bigger the challenge you undertake and the bigger the questions you ask yourself, will directly relate to the answers and solutions you get. How do you structure ideas?

You will notice that very successful people are able to think of concepts in a multidimensional way and are parallel thinkers. I recommend that you pay attention to the way you structure your thoughts and actually spend time thinking about where you are and where you need to go. - 16738

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