I was wrong...

I thought that critical thinking was the highest level of thought. Now I know better. Critical thinking evolves into something greater. When combined with self awareness it becomes reflective thinking.

The ability to know what you want from life and to critically evaluate your own behavior in order to develop the strategies and coping skills to obtain it, is reflective thinking. This is "mindfulness". This is the examined life that Socrates spoke of, and a level thinking that becomes a way of living. It is the virtue that lies between zealotry and impulse. In essence, it is the ability to understand one's own meta cognition and coordinate it to obtain one's maximum potential.

It seems that humility has once again found me as I have to scale yet another mountain in my quest for personal growth and development. This literally could take decades to master.

 

I can't really think of a simpler way to explain it, but I guess I can use a metaphor. Critical thinking is the grapes, self awareness and correction is the fermentation process, and reflective thinking is the wine. You are basically taking critical thinking and using it to assess and evaluate yourself and your own behavior in order to develop new strategies and coping abilities and this creates an entirely new kind of refined thought called reflective thinking.

 

I'm certain I've used reflective thinking for years, I've just never been aware of how to harness it until now. I was not blessed with parents who encouraged the ability and so I'm learning it a bit late in the game. An unfortunate byproduct of my religious upbringing was a sense of self importance and a belief that I could do no wrong as long as I stood true to my belief system. Fortunately, that was destroyed by my development of critical thinking ability. Critical thinking is a skill that most people don't learn until college, but even then reflective thinking is a skill that people generally learn younger than I am learning it now.

Evaluating and mastering your own behavior for the purpose of attaining your full potential is a lifelong quest once begun, but now I can finally see the map. In a few years, I may look back on my squabbling and find it to have been a waste of time and energy, but at least I finally feel I am making progress and learning to master myself.

Old enough to know better than to answer that question. Chronological age is irrelevant to an individual's personal development and so it can only play into people's biases and preconceptions regarding age groups.

 

That seems to be fairly close to my own experience in the matter. I feel like I am slipping into a sense of being where past, present, and future are all existing at the same time. When it comes to religion, I feel very happy that I shed that psychological crutch because now I feel like I'm a path to attaining my purpose in life. I can see why religion is essential for some people, and I think I'm beginning to get to a point in my life where I will need to simply recognize that some people need that crutch and I should just let them have it. It's beautiful that they want to believe something so badly and who am I to take that away from them?

 

For me, I would say that who I am in the present is the sum of who I was in the past, and the sum of my choices in the present will shape my future. So the present is the only point in which I can truly live.

 

Find what really matters to you and live day to day trying to obtain it. That is all there really is to it.

 

You didn't read the OP did ya?