Enlightened Thinking Is the Key to a Successful Life

The Thinker's Way
by John Chaffee, Ph.D.

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Over the past two decades I have worked with thousands of people to help them become more informed and enlightened thinkers-the key to living a life that is creative, professionally successful, and personally fulfilling. During my years of college teaching, I have discovered that many of my students-representing a broad social, economic, ethnic, and age spectrum-have repeatedly expressed concerns about their inability to control the forces that shape their lives; they are insecure about their ability to think clearly and independently; and they are frustrated by the challenge of creating lives of purpose and significance. In response to this, I created a course entitled Critical Thinking, designed to help people develop crucial thinking abilities and enlightened self-awareness in a practical, systematic, and lasting way. This course has been enormously successful in achieving its objectives. It has been taught to more than 25,000 people at my college, and courses based on my textbook, Thinking Critically, have been taken by more than half a million people in every part of the country.

The Thinker's Way reflects all that I have learned about how to improve our thinking process in order to enrich our lives. It is designed to provide the knowledge, guidance, and practice needed to elevate our thinking abilities to an optimal level.

As a natural result of improving your thinking abilities, The Thinker's Way will help you enrich the quality of your life and who you are as a human being. In our present culture, a great deal of time, money, and effort is spent seeking to improve our health, condition our bodies, and better our personal appearance. Too often neglected is the most important ingredient: the core of who we are, our ability to think and reflect, to understand our past and create our futures. And while there are many self-help books and programs designed to teach us strategies for improving our lives, these approaches will always have limited success if they don't address the need to think clearly, which in turn empowers us to think for ourselves. This is the essence of independent thought. In the absence of insightful thinking and genuine choice, "how-to" techniques will simply be empty exercises with little lasting impact. Selfhelp books and programs are too often cosmetic approaches to human transformation, promising to change deeply rooted behaviors and attitudes with simplistic techniques.

We must restructure the way that we think in order to reshape the way we are. Each of us strives for a life of purpose. Such lives are within our grasp, but to achieve them we must harness the power of our minds.

The many people I have taught over the years have yearned for such lives, and I suspect that the concerns they have expressed will be familiar to you. Their success in meeting these challenges with a critical thinking approach to their lives is compelling testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the power of the human mind.

A Thinking World

I am sometimes asked by people,"Aren't you concerned about what would happen if everyone became a critical thinker?" Let's imagine such a world. It would be a world in which everyone would be thoughtful. They would not act rashly or speak foolishly without thinking. They would be reflective, carefully considering different points of view and thinking deeply about important issues. People would listen to what you had to say and treat your views with respect, and if they disagreed with your point of view, they would explain why by providing intelligent reasons. At work, your boss would provide you with personal support and opportunities to take initiative, guiding you when you made mistakes, encouraging you to excel, and awarding you full credit for your accomplishments. Your relationships with family members would always be loving and honest, as you worked together harmoniously for common purposes. Your relationship with your romantic partner would be intimate and supportive, expressing deep commitment and emotional honesty. Parents would nurture their children with unconditional love and raise them to have respect for the needs of others. People of all ages would display enlightened values, empathizing with the needs of others and trying to help those less fortunate. Lying, cheating, stealing, personal violence: None of these would exist, replaced instead by kindness, generosity, consideration, goodwill. This would be a world filled with open-minded people who welcomed diverse ideas, customs, and personal differences. Racism, sexism, ageism, all forms of discrimination would be things of the past as all people would be treated with tolerance and consideration.

On a social level, all people would see themselves as members of the same community, with a responsibility for the well-being of all members, not just themselves. Everyone would work together to create a better life for all. Wise and principled political leaders would be elected by a thoughtful citizenry, and they would govern with insight, honesty, and compassion. Children would be educated in a system that encouraged their individual talents and respected their unique value. Television shows would be designed to stimulate thinking and expand understanding, as well as entertain. People on talk shows would express thoughtful, articulate opinions, never stooping to superficial analyses or personal insults. On the road, people would drive with safety and consideration, never letting their anger or desire to get ahead take hold of them at the expense of others. When people did make mistakes, they would always accept responsibility, never trying to blame others. Those who violated the law would be tried by juries who were astute thinkers, weighing the evidence judiciously and reaching fair-minded and well-supported verdicts.

On a personal level, you would be confident of your place in society, taken seriously by others who respected your special qualities. People would treat you with consideration, and you would reciprocate, with feelings of goodwill overwhelming any doubts or suspicions. You would think the best of people, and they would respond in kind. You would live your life under what philosophers used to call "the aspect of eternity," reflecting on the purpose of your existence and your connections to humanity and the universe. When working with others, your productive discussions would always move toward the most logical and informed conclusions. You would be able to navigate intelligently through the daily avalanche of information, separating the useful from the irrelevant. You would have a deep understanding of complex social issues, and would enjoy exploring their nuances through constructive conversations. You would live your life creatively, expressing yourself freely without fear of social condemnation. Your life would be vibrant, filled with satisfying relationships and accomplishments in which you would take great pride. You would enjoy the admiration of others as you steered a purposeful course that reflected your profound self-understanding. You would feel secure, strong, loved, happy, and fulfilled.

What would a world populated with critical thinkers be like? It would be a sublime world, the kind of world you would love to live in, the kind of world you would want for your children. It would be a world in which all people were able to achieve their personal potential, echoing the words of the writer Henry Miller:

We are all part of things,
We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians,
We have only to open up, to discover what is already there.

The 8 Steps of The Thinker's Way

Your thinking process operates most effectively when it has an idea of where it's headed. As you read, think, and work through The Thinker's Way, you can imagine yourself embarking on a journey to enlightened thinking and an enhanced life. The 8 Steps of the book represent guideposts to help direct your travels. Although each person has to discover-and create-his or her own path, these guideposts are universal and apply to everyone. You cannot achieve your full potential as a thinker or as a person if you do not successfully complete each of these 8 Steps. Of course, working your way through each of these Steps is not a one-time experience: you will find that you must return to each of these Steps as you live your life and attain higher levels of understanding. Each time you return to the themes of a particular Step, you will do so at a deeper and more profound level, integrating the insights into your life with heightened meaning. It's a spiraling process similar to understanding a complex idea like "romantic love." The "puppy-love" of your youth is gradually transformed into deeper, richer, and more complex feelings toward others, although the core emotion of responding to another person in a loving way remains constant throughout.

In addition, you will find that the principles and insights of the various Steps all work together to create your enlightenment and personal transformation, like different instruments in an orchestra producing a majestic symphony. So although there is a logic to the sequence in which the 8 Steps are presented, you will find that you are continually using abilities developed in one Step to help you succeed in other Steps. For example, you need to apply the insights and methods involved in the initial Steps:

Think Critically	(Step 1)
Live Creatively	(Step 2)
Choose Freely	(Step 3)

in order to successfully

Solve Problems Effectively	(Step 4)
Communicate Effectively	(Step 5)
Analyze Complex Issues	(Step 6)
Develop Enlightened Values	(Step 7)
Think Through Relationships	(Step 8)

As you gradually master and refine the thinking abilities and insights in each of the Steps, you will discover that they are synergistic, strengthening and enhancing one another as you deploy them in an integrated way. Their combined power will enable you to transform yourself and create a life philosophy.

Three Transforming Principles

The ability to Think Critically (Step 1), Live Creatively (Step2), and Choose Freely (Step 3) are the three life-principles of human transformation upon which this book is based. These three principles are interlocking pieces of the puzzle of your life. Working together as a unified force, these principles can illuminate your existence: answering questions, clarifying confusion, creating meaning, and providing fulfillment.

• Think Critically: When used properly, your thinking process acts like a powerful beacon of light, illuminating the depths of your personality and the breadth of your experience. Clear thinking is a tool that helps you disentangle the often confused jumble of thoughts and feelings that compose much of waking consciousness. By becoming a more powerful "critical thinker," you are acquiring the abilities you need to achieve your goals, solve problems, and make intelligent decisions. Critical thinkers are people who have developed thoughtful and well-founded beliefs to guide their choices in every area of their lives. In order to develop the strongest and most accurate beliefs possible, you need to become aware of your own biases, explore situations from many different perspectives, and develop sound reasons to support your points of view.

• Live Creatively: Creativity is a powerful life-force that can infuse your life with meaning. Working in partnership with critical thinking, creative thinking helps you transform your life into a rich tapestry of productivity and success. When you approach your life with a mindful sense of discovery and invention, you can continually create yourself in ways limited only by your imagination. A creative lens changes everything for the better: Problems become opportunities for growth, mundane routines become challenges for inventive approaches, relationships become intriguing adventures. When you give free rein to your creative impulses, every aspect of your life takes on a special glow. You are able to break out of unthinking habitual responses and live fully in every minute, responding naturally and spontaneously. It sounds magical and it is.

• Choose Freely: People can only transform themselves if they choose to take different paths in their lives, but only if their choices are truly free. To exercise genuine freedom, you must have the insight to understand all of your options and the wisdom to make informed choices. When you fully accept your freedom, you redefine your daily life and your future in a new light. By working to neutralize the constraints on your autonomy and guide your life in positive directions, you see alternatives that were not previously visible, concealed by the limitations of your vision. Your future becomes open, a field of rich possibilities that you can explore and choose among. A life that is free is one that is vital and exciting, suffused with unexpected opportunities and the personal fulfillment that comes from a life well lived.

Your "self" is in its essence a dynamic life-force, capable of thinking critically, living creatively, and choosing freely. These three essential dimensions of your "self" exist optimally when they work together in harmonious unity. When working together, these three basic elements create a person who is intelligent, creative, and determined-the ingredients for success in any endeavor. But consider the disastrous consequences of subtracting any of these elements from the dynamic equation If you lack the ability to think critically, you can't function very well in most challenging careers because you will have difficulty in thinking clearly, solving complex problems, and making intelligent decisions What's more, whatever creative ideas you come up with will be rootless lacking an intelligible framework or practical strategies for implementing them. You will be an impractical dreamer, condemned to a life of frustrated underachieving. Without insight into yourself, your freedom will be imprisoned, since you won't be able to see your choices clearly or liberate yourself from the influences that are constraining you.

If you lack the ability to live creatively, then your thinking abilities may enable you to perform in a solid, workmanlike fashion, but your work will lack imagination, you will be fearful of trying out original approaches because of the risk of failure, and your personality will be missing the spontaneous sparkle that people admire and are drawn to. You will in time become a competent but unimaginative "worker-bee," performing your duties with predictable adequacy, but never rising to the lofty heights of which you are capable. Your choices will be as limited as your imagination, and your habitual choices of the safe and secure paths will eventually create a very small canvas for your personal portrait.

If you lack the ability to choose freely, then your abilities to think critically or creatively cannot save you from a life of disappointment. Though you may be able to analyze clearly and understand, you will lack the will to make the difficult choices and stay the course when you encounter obstacles and adversities. And though you may develop unique and valuable ideas, your inability to focus your energies and make things happen will doom these ideas to anonymity. If you lack the will to create yourself as a strong individual of character and integrity, the people you encounter will come to view you as a shallow-rooted reed that bends with the wind of superficial trends, not someone deserving of authority and responsibility.

Think of what you aspire to: a life of purpose and meaning, the respect and devotion of those around you, success and fulfillment in your chosen endeavors, and a secure sense of who you are, with the courage and vision to accomplish great things. These aspirations are within your grasp, but only if you develop all of these fundamental dimensions of yourself to their fullest potential: to think critically, live creatively, and choose freely-to live your life The Thinker's Way.

© 1998 by John Chaffee, Ph.D.

About the Author

John Chaffee, Ph.D. is a nationally recognized leader in the area of intellectual development, and is the author of several books including the bestselling text, Thinking Creatively. He is Director of the New York Center for Critical Thinking and Language Learning, and Professor of Philosophy at The City University of New York. He conducts Critical Thinking workshops and lectures around the country.