INSIGHTS ON LIFE

How Do You Think About Your Condition?

The world is not a perfect place and you are not a perfect person. You don’t have it all rosy. You still have wants and needs. Or, may be your condition is a sad one; you’re in dire need of all human needs, plus that of love and recognition. Every morning you rise up, you’re reminded of all you need, all you want. And you spend most of your time thinking about how to bring yourself out of this condition.

Understand this: no one ever stepped out of the mire of poverty and needs by wishful thinking, or reveries, or daydreaming. Serious thinking upon their conditions offered men and women a rope out of their pits. You also think about how to elevate yourself out of your own mire. Many other individuals are thinking so too. But, there is a wrong way many of us go about it; we don’t think as we should on our conditions.

There are two modes of thinking that people engage in when emancipating themselves from poverty and needs is concerned. The first is sympathetic thinking and the second is critical thinking. Sympathetic thinking is the emotional response you give to your condition. It is not thinking in itself but in it you make yourself feel like you are thinking how to bring yourself out of your sad condition. You sympathize with yourself and make an emotional flashback of how far you have come, your mistakes, failures, successes and wins. You even compare yourself with those who are making it ahead of you. Then your mind drifts about to various ‘what can I dos’ without any serious thought upon a single option. Emotion doesn’t allow logic play, and at the end of the day a simple distraction takes you off your ‘thinking’.

The other mode of thinking is the critical thinking. This mode is hard that is why many people never cross over to it from the sympathetic. I had to pause here to critically think what critical thinking is. Exercising critical thinking upon your condition means you’re doing a thorough thoughtful, rigorous search for solutions, a way out of that condition that saddens you and dims your happiness. You impress reason, logic, facts, and insight into the options you have. If getting a job is an option, you think deeper on which job offers you the best chances. Are your qualifications enough to meet the job? Is distance from where you live favorable? What if you can’t get the job, what other options do you have? Can you bear the waiting period in applying and waiting for the call? How would you handle the waiting period? Or, could you start a business? What business? Got capital? Can you partner with someone? Who? Streams of critical thinking like these with no emotions attached often leads to breakthroughs ideas! And it can’t be done just in a day. How long is left to you.

Critical thinking applies to every area of your life, even your love relationship. Let down that childish emotion coloring your thought processes! Be critical! And stand by whatever decision you make. Always have backup options, or make them along the way as you go. Just don’t sympathize with your condition and then keep yourself on a long thing. Think it through!

Victor Negro is based in Lagos. He writes on matters of life and existence as he thinks, preferring better understanding of common questions