Critical Thinking
By: Jannat Oishy
Tags: Confidence, Overcome Fear, Thinking, Critical Thinking, Success

When you read or hear the term “Critical Thinking”, the first thing that must come to your mind, ‘What is critical thinking?’ Now the word ‘Critical’ itself maybe creates a negative vibe! You could think that thinking critically must be negative! Maybe you can think that thinking critically is for experts like Sherlock Holmes or you can assume that critical thinkers are mastermind criminals!

Well, I can assure you that you don’t need to be an expert to think critically and the ability to think critically can change your life for good!

Now, what exactly is critical thinking? According to Moore and Parker (the authors of the book ‘Critical Thinking’) “Critical thinking is the careful application of reason in the determination of whether a claim is true”

In simple words ‘critical thinking’ is thinking rationally about what you believe, evaluate all parts of a claim that someone makes before you give your judgment. The term critical refers to a way of thinking in analytical stands you take regards to the fact that you have read, heard or saw.

People often make a decision based on emotion, intuition, faith or common sense. Critical thinking allows you to put this others way of thinking under the microscope of reason. For example, if you are too scared to do a particular task, you always put the feelings of fear first and you don’t usually give much effort to find out the reason behind your fear. You don’t think much about the fact that is it actually reasonable to be afraid? Is it rational to be scared considering the present situation? If you put the feelings aside and start evaluating the facts you might get your answers and be able to overcome your fear.

Suppose you saw on social media that says “A man in Florida gives birth a child” will you believe it instantly? Or you will simply deny it by saying it’s not possible! Well if you are a critical thinker you will examine the source of news. You will search for resources that support the fact that you read earlier. Thus critical thinking can simply help you to think more sensibly in daily life.

If you are still thinking about why it is so important? Another simple example will give your answer. Suppose you work in the production department of a company. Your supervisor asked, “should we think about launching a new product or continue with current product?” You answered instantly to grab the attention and said that the current product is selling well and we should definitely stick with it. But your co-worker didn’t answer instantly rather the next day he comes with a report of the current market situation that shows the current product may lose the value in few months and company can face a huge loss. Now what you think who will get the attention of the supervisor? By taking time to assess beliefs and opinions and verify them with authentic information give us insight and understanding which helps us to find the possible best solution of a problem that we would not have developed without critical thinking. Critical thinking helps us to avoid mistakes by improving our judgmental and evaluation skills.

Josh Lanyon said,

“If there was one life skill everyone on the planet needed, it was the ability to think with critical objectivity”