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Summary: Writing With the Mind and Body |
You are what you think. That's right. Whatever you are doing right now, whatever you feel, whatever you want—all are determined by the quality of your thinking. If your thinking is unrealistic, your thinking will lead to many disappointments. If your thinking is overly pessimistic, it will deny you due recognition of the many things in which you should properly rejoice. For most people, most of their thinking is subconscious, that is, never explicitly put into words. The problem is that when you are not aware of your thinking you have no chance of “correcting” it. When thinking is subconscious, you are in no position to see any problems in it. And, if you don't see any problems in it, you won't be motivated to change it.
—Foundation for Critical Thinking (2015)
What you will learn in this chapter:
• The connection between critical thinking and cultural competence
• Critical thinking as a habit of mind that can be learned and practiced daily
• Critical thinking as ethical thinking
Critical Thinking and Professional Responsibility
In Chapter 2, we discussed the nexus between critical thinking and the contexts in which we work. We explained that the needs of employers and other professional organizations sometimes come into conflict with the discipline required for critical thinking. We discussed how deliberate, reflective thinking and mindfulness promote social justice and help avoid oppression, but may challenge social organizations. Earlier in this book, we introduced the notion of professional ethics, meaning that sometimes we must be guided by values rather than what seems right at the time. In this chapter, we link critical thinking, professional ethics, and cultural competence.
196Critical Thinking as a Habit of Mind
As mentioned previously, the habits of mind practiced by critical thinkers take honesty and courage, but the very habits of mind that lead to effective critical thinking also lead to effective writing and a more effective professional life in general. Although critical thinking is a basic competency for educated people, it is also true that professionals in justice and social services have a responsibility to reflect on and understand their own lives before they try to serve others. Critical thinking requires reflection and reflection requires a space not filled by distraction. One can even find this principle in ancient Eastern philosophies: Figure out your own mind before you try to help figure out someone else’s! Finding a quiet space may be difficult given the intrusive nature of technology and the incessant demands for our attention (particularly on the go!), but we must find it if we are to master critical thinking and become effective writers and professionals in our field. The goal is to understand how we think and act, which in turn helps us to become better communicators in both oral and written formats. Critical thinking in this way helps us keep our objectivity.
Reflection is not the same thing as obsessing over one’s thoughts. To reflect means to take a step back, to relax, to come down, and to calm down in an effort to take stock of one’s previous thoughts, feelings, and actions as if they belonged to someone else. To do this effectively requires a discipline of both mind and body. Effective reflection requires a commitment of time and space apart from day-to-day activities. Day-to-day activity causes certain thought patterns to arise, as well as longer term habits of mind that we learn growing up to kick into gear. Combine these habits with the emotional rigors of one’s professional responsibility and we might find ourselves obsessing over our thoughts with no way out. We become lost in the closed maze of our own thinking. Trapped, we go around and around with little or no positive outcome for all of our worrying. Furthermore, it is unlikely that we would be able to write an insightful and objective document for the task at hand.
Remember our discussion of metacognition in Chapter 3? As we explained, metacognition is the process of taking a step back and refocusing on who we are and what we are thinking. We linked metacognition to deliberate, mindful breathing. Shallow breathing results in shallow thinking, only the most basic of mind. A pause in the breath puts our mind on hold (and can increase anxiety), so a continuous, nurturing breath for the mind is like good, nutritious food for our body. This type of breathing helps us to concentrate. Yes, being mindful of our breath is the key to concentration. Free from distractions, we can engage in critical thinking and become effective writers and orators.
It is important not to wait until fight or flight kicks in to recognize that you are feeling stressed and anxious. (Remember from Chapter 3 that our amygdala is engaged in reptilian brain thinking!) Our amygdala is the primitive part of the brain that functions on fear and anger. It is incapable of guiding us in logic, problem-solving, and objective thinking. Awareness of our breathing can both help us maintain our calm and, over the long term, lower blood pressure and provide many health benefits, similar to practicing yoga.
Remember from Chapter 2 the discussion on metacognition? Effective metacognition is the process in which we think about thinking in order to achieve order, insight, and objective assessment. Essentially, it is mindfulness. Practicing metacognition can even make us smarter. We know it seems like a fancy word, but really metacognition is very 197straightforward. We simply practice looking inward to examine how we can be more effective in what we do, say, speak, and write. Even new tasks can become easier through this inward-looking practice because we know how to problem solve more effectively. It just takes a little exertion to be successful in developing our metacognition. Mindfulness with exertion gets the ball rolling.
A Practice to Calm the Mind: Counting to Four
Try this simple exercise in equal breathing. It has health benefits for the body that reduce stress by calming the nervous system. To start breathing mindfully, inhale for a count of four and then exhale for a count of four. Do this four times. If possible, pass the breath through the nose rather than the mouth. Once you have mastered counting four breaths in and four breaths out, you can advance your practice by aiming for six to eight counts. You can practice this anywhere, such as while sitting in a meeting, sitting in a squad car, or standing at the grocery checkout line.
Mindfulness requires that we address our emotional lives in order to calm our cognitive lives long enough to take stock. “Take stock in what?,” you might ask. Professional advancement and excelling at your job require exertion, but only the right kind of exertion will ultimately get us where we want to go. The secret to a successful career, minute by minute, hour by hour, is practicing the virtue of exertion. The principles that you use for mindfulness (along with the practice of mindful breathing) can be applied to all aspects of your life. When you make a conscious decision to exert yourself, nothing becomes that difficult and, in fact, exertion is necessary to accomplish anything! If we mindfully apply ourselves in any situation, it is exertion. And this means that nothing is out of reach. Knowing what we need to do is not enough; we have to do it.
Take, for example, the highly celebrated book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey (1989/2004). While working on his doctoral dissertation, Covey reviewed 200 years of literature on success, and noticed that the writings on this topic focused not on flamboyant personality characteristics but on underlying characteristics of integrity, courage, justice, and patience. He argued that we need to approach our career on developing habits of self-mastery, or achieving the private victories that get us out of our rut and make us take stock of the positive that surrounds us. Second, we then can recognize the interdependent nature of our situation with others and build win–win situations. He suggests that to do this we must first seek to understand ourselves and then seek to be understood by others. This synergy of give and take is exertion; it is success that is developed from the inside out. Exertion is the paddle to our boat that rows us to success, from positive interactions with our coworkers to a sense of renewal and continual improvement toward our goals. Covey reminds us that simply changing outward behavior is not effective. Covey draws on an example from experiments in which two groups of people are shown two different drawings. One group is shown, for instance, a drawing of a young, beautiful woman. The other group is shown a drawing of an old, frail woman. After the initial exposure to the pictures, both groups are shown one picture of a more abstract drawing. This drawing actually contains the elements of 198both the young and the old woman. Almost invariably, everybody in the first group that was shown the young woman sees a young woman in the abstract drawing, and those in the second group who were shown the old woman see an old woman. Each group is convinced that it had objectively evaluated the drawing. The point is that we see things not as they are but as we are conditioned to see them. Metacognition allows us to see both perspectives. Once we understand the importance of our past conditioning, we can experience a paradigm shift in the way we see things. Ultimately, to make large changes in our lives, we must work on the basic paradigms through which we see the world.
Using exertion as our guide, we can come to objectively identify principles that exist in all human beings. These examples are honesty, integrity, human dignity, quality, potential, and growth. These have universal application and most definitely apply to our situation of writing (and articulating) objectively and justly.
Certainly we can choose to be reactive to our environment, but we can also choose to be proactive and not let our situation determine how we will feel. Reactive behavior can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we accept that we can do nothing about our situation we become passive and do nothing. That is not exertion! Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. While imprisoned, Frankl realized that he had the power to choose how he would respond to the atrocities he witnessed every day. He exercised the only freedom he had: envisioning himself teaching students after his release. His exertion was exemplary and he became a source of inspiration for others around him. Of course, there are no guarantees that exertion can control or even influence the external environment, but it can make a difference in how we manage ourselves in relation to the challenges we experience.
The final two habits of Covey’s book on success focus on synergy and how to “sharpen the saw.” Synergy is described as finding ways to understand difference through mutual trust and understanding (remember what we learned about cultural competency?). Often conflict can be resolved when we become open to what is around us and reject old ways of thinking or having to be right.
Sharpening the saw refers to taking time out for personal renewal. How effectively we work, write, and speak has to do with the interconnectedness of our lives in all its dimensions: the physical, mental, social/emotional, and spiritual dimensions. To physically sharpen our saw we must exercise, eat right, and manage our time so that we may sharpen our social and emotional well-being. We must also make time to engage in service to others, which allows us to cultivate empathy. This synergy of working with others fosters our own intrinsic security and guides our success. To develop our mental saw of success, we must read, visualize, plan, and write. Finally, our spiritual saw is sharpened when we seek value clarification in our own lives and make a commitment to study and meditate. These habits create intrinsic security, which makes us successful. Our daily private victories of sharpening the saw of success mean integrating these elements and practicing them daily. These principles allow us to exert ourselves with right effort, right conduct, and the right awareness to bring meaning to our work and to ourselves, and help bring justice to the world. Exerting ourselves toward these virtues creates stability in our lives and brings success, even happiness, to both our professional and personal lives.
199Conclusion
At its most effective level, critical thinking leads to ethical thinking. Individual and group integrity remains central to the well-being of any organization because it ensures the respect and fair treatment of its members. Criminal justice professions often include integrity management to foster ethical behavior and personal integrity on the job. These include responsibility to oneself as well as to the group, reliability, and being able to follow one’s internal moral compass.
Diversity can mean many things: age, sex, ethnicity, physical or cognitive ability, education, socioeconomic level, and the like. Effective critical thinking prepares us to negotiate an increasingly diverse environment and, regardless of what justice profession one pursues, intercultural understanding and the ability to thrive in a diverse environment are absolutely necessary. Critical thinking helps us to uncover our own biases and unwarranted beliefs based in fear and ignorance that can prevent us from thinking effectively and behaving in a way that preserves the dignity of the people we serve.
References
Covey, S. R. (2004). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1989).
Foundation for Critical Thinking. (2015). Our concept and definition of critical thinking. Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/our-concept-and-definition-of-critical-thinking/411