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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this quick self-help segment I'm going to talk about critical thinking all right critical thinking so let's crack into this one let's crack with this one wide open critical thinking is a critical skill to have and we're going to talk about why it's important we're also going to talk about how to develop it and we're going to go deep on this one I'm going to give you some wisdom not just tips but wisdom about why this is something that you should be caring about so ultimately what is what is behind critical thinking let's define it and let's talk about why you want to develop it well the reason that you want to develop critical thinking is because it will allow you to solve many of the problems in your life that you have the problems in the bottlenecks and the obstacles that are holding you back those will keep holding you back until you start to think about them and analyze them and then work on them and you can't work on a problem until you've identified it become aware of it and a lot of times you can't become aware of a problem until you've really thought about it critically so this is a tool that you will use throughout the rest of your life to solve all your problems and all your challenges and to take your life to the next level and the next level in the next level personally for me critical thinking has always been something that I valued just inherently and something that I was good at so this came natural to me and when I look back at my life where I've come to now where I am now the position I'm at now all the success that I've had all the things that I've done for myself all the changes that I've made there's no way in hell it just baffles me there's no way in hell that that could have happened without thinking about those problems really analyzing them working my way through them independently right I did that independently sure I got a lot of valuable information from other people from other sources from books from television from media from other gurus and whatnot but in the end I had to take that on I took on the burden of thinking through the problems myself and that is what's really the core of critical thinking let's really think about critical thinking let's use four to go thinking to think about critical thinking which will show you what critical thinking actually is so who are some great critical thinkers in history let's take a look at a couple of them how about Rene Descartes how about David Hume Isaac Newton Plato Socrates Aristotle the Buddha Albert Einstein Pablo Picasso Leonardo da Vinci just a short list we can make this list literally thousands of names long but just a short sampling of some great thinkers when you look at these people and you study them or you study their work or you even read just some little short blurb about them on Wikipedia what you learn is that these were deep thinkers and these were independent thinkers and this is the key that I want you to take away from this video is that critical thinking is independent thinking that means that you are figuring out the problem for yourself you're generating the answers for yourself you're not just taking whatever is given to you it's very easy especially now with the internet and all this information overload that we have all this knowledge we've accumulated over the last 2 and 1/2 thousand years of human history really since the since the Greek times is it's what is we've got all this wisdom we've got all this knowledge we've got all this facts and information and trivia and and all this and it's just out there and we tend to just go and appropriate we just appropriate assimilate and dudududududududu it's like we're just grabbing stuff we're grabbing stuff but we're not critically thinking about we're not analyzing it what tends to happen there is that you get caught up in the values and the beliefs of whoever you're taking that information from instead of yourself you're not generating the answer yourself the best example I can give you here and I hesitate to give it but I'll give it to you because look it's important remember in geometry class where you were given a theorem about let's say triangles or parallel lines or the way angles work you were given some theorem and you you could use that theorem to generate answers to various problems but then you were also asked later in the class to then not just use the theorem but then to actually prove it to derive it do you remember that yeah and I mean I hated doing that but the point there is that there's something important about being able to derive a truth for yourself versus just taking it from culture Society or somebody else when you do that even though it can be painful challenging and it's much easier to just take a theorem and just apply it without thinking critically about it when you do that you get true understanding you get true perspective you get real mastery if you actually went through and did those proofs in geometry class then you actually developed a deep understanding of why geometry works the way it does if you just took the theorems that were handed to you and you never did the proofs you slacked off on that part and then you just apply the theorems then chances are that even to this day you don't really have a solid understanding of some of the laws of geometry you don't understand for example why certain angles add up to certain certain amounts you understand why triangles are the way they are and circles are the way they are and squares and other things are the way they are you don't understand that because you have it thought through the process this is something that's very undervalued nowadays in society it used to be very highly regarded in the Classical eras like the Greek times the Roman times right just think about the Socratic method what did Socrates do what was his philosophical style it was interesting because the Socratic method all it is is just asking questions the way that Socrates would educate his students students of philosophy the way he would do with philosophy himself is he would ask you questions so you might come in there and say well I believe such-and-such and you would say okay you believe that well if that's true then that must also imply this and then you would say no it doesn't apply that then you said okay well then what you said must be false or maybe you agree yes it does imply that but it doesn't apply it in the way that you thought and so now it implies something slightly different and then that thing implies something slightly different in something else and something else and so you have this chain of implications from that original assumption or that original belief and through this process you can go down this chain of reasoning by asking question after question after question posing hypothetical scenarios and you can really get pretty deep into the truth of the matter and start to really see what is making this idea tick so what you got to be doing with your life is you got to be doing that and if you're curious about how do I actually build critical thinking skills how to actually do that well you have to you have to just start doing it you have to start asking yourself questions instead of taking facts and information from the media and from books just accepting this true start analyzing it thinking it one example of this is when you're reading a book if you're reading a nonfiction book I think one of the signs that you're a critical reader is that as you're reading it you put it down a lot of times you can't just read a deep non-fiction book cover-to-cover and not stop for me when I'm reading I read the book I read a couple of pages then I have to stop and think about what I read and I have to ask myself questions is that true does it really work like that if it is true one of the implications for my life what are the implications for all the other information that I've gathered right see I start to ask myself those questions sometimes I'll read just two pages and then I'll go off on a tangent in my mind thinking going down this chain of critical thinking that I've got going and I'll spend 15 minutes thinking about it and then I'll I'll realize that I was caught in that chain I'll be like okay let's get back to the book finally I get back to the book because I want to finish the book too so a little bit of a trade-off there but basically you go through and you read a couple of pages than you think about it you don't just read the book cover-to-cover and then throw it away and then go on to the next one that's just you sucking in information and then who knows what effect that's going to have on you see the problem right now in society is that we have a lot of people throwing information at you and a lot of that information is is motivated by commercial interests commercial purposes there are literally billion dollar marketing departments across the country across the world that are looking at how to trap you into buying their product they might not even think the product is good it'll still figure out a way to trap you into it they'll figure out a way to make you believe whatever is convenient for them whatever produces the most money for them and that's a very powerful dangerous force and you have to be able to unplug yourself from that when you start to think critically you start to think independently for yourself powerful things start to happen this is why particularly is so critical when you have that ability then what you're going to create for yourself is a son a sense of self direction and self reliance because right now if you're not a critical thinker then you do not have your own direction in life you do not have a sense of reliance on yourself you're relying on the media on culture on your friends on people around you on your college professors on whatever to get you the information that you need and what they're doing is they're providing you quite frankly with horseshit garbage negative information that is flat-out false highly distorted or leading you down the path that you do not want to be going down when you unplug yourself from that it's crazy I think the best analogy I can give is it's almost like there's a herd of cattle and they're all running they're all running like in a stampede towards a canyon far off in the distance this just giant herd of cattle all walking or running even towards this canyon and you're part of that herd and you don't even realize that what's going to happen is that a little soon enough the canyons not that close right now but soon enough that canyons going to come and when that whole her gets there they're gonna fall off the cliff and you're going to come along for the ride that's that's what society basically is that's what mainstream society is is that and everyone who's who's plugged into that is going to fall off the cliff it's that dead serious this what's happening with your health it's what's happening with the entertainment that you're watching so what's happening with your lack of exercise this what's happening with the crappy career that you're in this is what's happening with how you understand relationships and sex and religion and morality all this stuff has just been handed to you and you just take it you just accept it you don't think about it whatsoever you don't discover the truths for yourself when you start to discover these truths for yourself and think very critically independently rely on yourself as the primary source and leave all the other sources as secondary sources when you are the primary source you're going to realize that a lot of the ideas out there are just flat-out wrong for you are not going to work are extremely unhealthy flat-out false greatly distorted and what you're going to do is you're going to be that one cow that sees what's happening in a step and you're going to stop and you're going to go in the opposite direction you're going to say damn I'm so glad that I broke out of that herd because if I kept going down that path I would have surely fallen off the cliff and all those cows that are going down that direction they're going to have a miserable and horrible life but me because I've got my own sense of direction I'm going to go and I'm going to chart my own path through life and my path is going to be an independent path a critical path the path that can have strength and value and that can generate something new for Humanity that can create powerful ideas can start powerful projects can help people in powerful ways and can can deeply deeply fulfill me so this is the bottom line of why critical thinking and important and how it should be working so practically how do we actually implement this well I'm telling you stop getting information mindlessly from the environment so that means stop books stop internet stop television stop magazines stop getting your information for people and family and religion and from history and philosophy and just from gurus out there including myself and professors and teachers stop relying on those people to just force-feed you golden nuggets you can use all that as a way to prime the pump but then you got to do the work you got to put that stuff into your mill look at your mind is it's like a a mill that's going to grind through this material that you're putting into it so you put the material in then you actually have to do the grinding that's not what you've been doing so far to actually do that you have to start asking questions ask questions about your religion don't be afraid ask questions about history question it be skeptical be a total skeptic be a cynic at least for a while go through that phase be very skeptical be very critical be very analytical about what people are telling you people's opinions and value your own opinions above the opinions of others and actually try to derive this stuff derive it derive the truths ask yourself what is true what is real what is valuable to me what is important in life answer those yourself don't just get that from your parents don't just get that from your church don't get that from a book don't even get that from me everything I'm telling you should be analyzing very very critically and seeing what works what's true and what's not so it's true for me and what I believe to be true is not necessarily what's true it's not necessarily what's going to work for you you have to figure that out think don't be lazy think all right the two factors for critical thinking are what are they curiosity and open-mindedness if you're curious and you're fascinated by ideas and understanding things that's going to help you a long way it's gonna that's going to move you a long way forward along this track to becoming a good critical thinker and if you're open minded to ideas it's going to be so so important to to make it down this path as well because if you're closed-minded then you're basically you're not going to be able to analyze ideas properly and really find the truth because your blinders are on and you're looking as one direction for truth but truth might be over here except you're looking always over here because people told you to always be looking over here so you will never find what's really true being open-minded means that you're willing to do this you're willing to go and look into every direction every nook and cranny doesn't matter who tells you what and if someone tells you not to look somewhere that's probably someplace that you should actually go and look right because why would they tell you not to look there probably because they're afraid of what you're going to find out so look in every nook and cranny that's what you got to do be curious and be open-minded all right so that's what I have to say about critical thinking be an independent thinker be a critical thinker the more you do this the more you practice it the more is just going to build and snowball and snowball and snowball and soon enough you're going to realize that you are an amazing critical thinker independent thinker and your life is going to take that trajectory you're going to break off from that that herd that's going down the cliff and you're going to walk in a positive new direction all right so this is it for critical thinking I am signing off go ahead post me some comments share this in like this if you would I like to spread the message I'd like you to help me do that that's why I put out this content for free and of course if you're interested in this material that I'm sharing with you guys you got to go check out actualized org and subscribe to our newsletter it's a free newsletter you get some awesome bonuses just for signing up but really you're going to be getting updates with more videos like this all for free no no spam or anything like that and the reason that you want to sign up there is because everything we're releasing all the information I'm sharing with you guys is coming from my own critical thinking and of course I'm getting a lot of information but I'm using my own critical thinking I'm sharing it with you and it shows you when you watch me think critically it shows you how to think critically so if you want to develop critical thinking listen to what I'm telling you because I'm sharing very rich deep ideas that you do not get in most other media sources out there so these are extremely rich nuanced deep ideas that have been very well researched that are extremely powerful and doesn't mean that you should just swallow them whole but it means that you can use this as fodder for your mill and it's a higher quality fodder I'm giving you higher quality fodder and you actually practice along and you can see how I do it too because I share it's with you here and there about how I derive some of my understanding so this is perfect for you go ahead and sign up you