The haves:
People that lack critical thinking skills are often referred to as in social circles as ‘Debbie Downers’. Usually these types of people are fluent in pessimism and negativity. They often build most of their conversations on complaining about various things in life, and when given specific opportunities to do better, it is always someone else’s fault that they are not able to meet the challenges involved with those opportunities, because they do not see that their failures are due to being stagnant in their own growth mindsets. Speaking from experience: when you have frequent association with individuals that do not possess critical thinking skills, it can begin to wear down your mental health. If you are an empath such as myself, you may find yourself constantly attempting to step in to assist the people that you care about, all well knowing that it could have the potential to backfire. Let’s say you are feeling terrible for a friend that lost a job, and you want to help, knowing that your company is hiring and the work environment is enjoyable with great benefits. After getting your friend hired, you realize that now, not only do you have a pessimistic friend, you now also have a pessimistic co-worker that complains about the job because of having a restricted mindset.
Growth Mindset vs Restricted Mindset:
A restricted mindset refers to a way of thinking that is overly limiting, often characterized by rigid beliefs, a lack of flexibility, and a tendency to see only a narrow range of possibilities, which prevents someone from considering new ideas, taking risks, or adapting to different situations. Essentially it’s an excessively constrictive mindset that restricts personal growth and potential. Not only can this be detrimental to personal growth it can also affect the flow of society in various ways.
Notable characteristics of a restricted mindset are:
- Fear of Failure/Avoiding taking risks
- All or nothing thinking
- Fixed beliefs
- Negative self talk
Let’s look at the benefits of having critical thinking skills: critical thinking improves decision making by assessing information and considering multiple choices. Improved problem solving skills involve breaking down difficult problems into smaller components and analyzing viable solutions using critical thinking. Critical thinking enhances creativity and innovation! Just think: we went from living in caves to living in homes with heat and insulation, just by using the skill of critical thinking! Exploring alternative views and challenging preconceptions can spark new ideas. Critical thinking improves communication by enabling clear articulation, effective examination of arguments, and deliberate responses to other opinions. Critical thinking allows people to build compelling arguments using facts and reasoning to back up their ideas. I pride myself on really being able to engage in any type of conversation eloquently and effectively, regardless of age or ethnicity just because I use critical thinking in my everyday life. Also, critical information analysis helps individuals discern between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources. In the era of ‘fake news’ and AI generated propaganda, it’s especially important to be able to recognize truthful information. Not only does this keep us safe, it can also make a difference in things such as protecting your finances and personal identification from scammers. Critical thinking promotes adaptability and flexibility by encouraging openness to new information and changing situations. Lastly, critical thinking can help self-reflection as well as personal development by regularly evaluating one’s own thoughts and actions.
The have-nots:
A deficit in critical thinking skills could be a set back in various ways, when certain fixed beliefs are in place, such as thinking that one can not learn new things, policies or procedures, it can hold someone back from a lucrative career, or pursing an advanced position in their current careers. It can cause isolation from beneficial social circles if the mindset is that adults cannot make new friends. Or it can prevent one from pursing new hobbies, such as wanting to travel, if the mindset is unwilling to try new things and new environments. Having a lack of critical thinking skills could be due to different reasons, it could be that some people are simply just hardwired that way, it’s only a detriment if those patterns keep a person in a pessimistic mindset. In this case, it may be a mental condition that keeps the person stuck in the same patterns. Another cause could be the environment that people are accustomed to or it could be socially/culturally ingrained, sort of a nature vs nurture thing. In my personal encounters I have also noticed that those that lack critical thinking skills do not set goals or nurture specific hobbies, mostly because goal setting does require a level of grit, perseverance and critical thinking and nurturing hobbies often require in some way to step outside of a comfort zone.
Helping others to help themselves
Unraveling a fixed mindset involves helping others to increase their level of critical thinking skills. If we continuously enable, it does not help individuals see all of the ways that critical thinking is helpful, not only for themselves, but as a functioning member of society as a whole. Critical thinking is important in modern society to keep us all forward moving. The ability to problem solve on a personal level can impact society and social programs in many ways. We see examples of this through adult education programs which helps adults to obtain educational skills needed to advance in a workplace environment.
We can’t always get through life playing checkers when the set up is chess. We have to employ extra grit, resilience and perseverance in certain situations, this is where the use of critical thinking skills helps to propel us into improved personal and societal situations.
Self Cultivation 