What it means to THINK

According to William James, “a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” Another quote is one popularly attributed to Thomas Edison: “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”

Now, I’d give my view and let you decide at the end of all this whether you are part of the thinking five percent or otherwise. 😉

Personally, I believe that thinking is integral to success. Going by our introductory quotes, it’s quite easy to see why most people do not succeed. You can think and you CAN think. The difference? Well, like has been said so many times, to be an active, useful and consequentially, respectable member of the world at large, you have to possess the rare quality that people talk about all the time but don’t apply. And what exactly is that? You might ask, well…simply put:

You have to know that it is not enough to just think about thinking.

You have to actually make a conscious effort to think and not just to think but to think right and productively. I am almost too sure that, at this point, a lot of people are like: Does she think we are dumb? A lot of us do that or at least I do and productively in fact. What the hell is she talking about?

Well, here’s the thing, what a lot of you engage in is called daydreaming or worse still, building castles in the air. In essence, the hell I am talking about is that one you will wake up to some years from now and realize that your youth is gone and all you did was fantasizing in the pretext of thinking. You never really thought because if you had, you would have known to make plans, prepare to implement them and then do what you had to do to see that goal achieved.

Ruminate on this: Thinking is a process that should trigger you to action, to take a step and stop living your dream in fairytale land and to start working towards achieving that dream; that future that you desire. So, if you think you’re thinking but all these are not evident in your life, then my friend, you are part of the ignorant ten percent. And if you don’t do even that then, your guess is as good as mine.

                                                                                 That’s how GraceOla sees it

                                                                                              Signing out…Peace