[Neurons] 2015 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #6

Mon Jan 26 07:12:47 EST 2015

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2015  #6

January 26, 2015

CRITICAL THINKING

AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Who of all the people on Planet Earth has a better chance of successfully
engaging in clear and focused critical thinking?  The answer is -
self-actualizing people!  Abraham Maslow said this.  He said that one of the
characteristics that he and his graduate students kept finding in
self-actualizing people was a "more efficient perception of reality and more
comfortable relations with it."  But why?  What explains it?  How is it that
a self-actualizing person should or could have a more accurate perception of
reality?  This is exactly what Maslow asked:

"What are the factors that make it possible for healthy people to perceive
reality more efficiently, to predict the future more accurately, to perceive
more easily what people really are like, that make it possible for them to
endure or to enjoy the unknown, the unstructured and ambiguous, and the
mysterious?" (Motivation and Personality, 1970, p. 282)

Several factors enter into play here.  I will mention a few that contribute
to the ability and the skill of critical thinking.

First and foremost is the fact that the more grounded you are, the more
inwardly secure, and growing that you are, then the less you have to fear
from reality.  With the less to fear, the less you need to distort reality
to protect your cocoon of fantasies and childish wishes and into which you
escape and/or avoid reality when it gets too much.

"Our healthy subjects are generally unthreatened and unfrightened by the
unknown, being therein quite different from average men.  They accept it,
are comfortable with it, and often are even more attracted by it than the
known." (1970, p. 154)

By experiencing the process of actualizing your best self, you have
separated self from behavior so that you can unconditionally value your self
and treat your behavior as an expression of yourself.  They are expressions
that can always be improved and upgraded.  You know that.  You are
comfortable with that.  This, in turn, grounds you in the sense of having a
solid sense of your value, uniqueness, and unconditional preciousness.  Now
you can look clear-eyed at your actions and experiences without blinking.
Now, without being afraid that inferior behavior would undermine your
personal worth and value, you can embrace reality for whatever it is.

With that kind of grounding in an unconditional value of yourself, you are
free to face reality without a need to distort it.  No fear!  It is what it
is, and whatever it is takes nothing away from you.  For that reason, you
don't need to defend self, prove anything, or arrogate to yourself qualities
or traits you do not.  You can be modest and humble because you are already
unconditionally valuable.  Yes, it is a paradox and one that you can glory
in.  It frees you for critical thinking so that you can make ever-better
adjustments to reality.  Now you can more fully accept reality on its terms,
not on childish demands and fantasies.

"The neurotic is not emotionally sick- he is cognitively wrong!  If health
and neurosis are, respectively, correct and incorrect perceptions of
reality, propositions of fact and propositions of value merge in this
area..." (1970, p. 153)

Second, once you are free in your person to accept and face reality, now the
adventure that we call "life" becomes for you an adventure of exploration
and discovery.  This encourages critical thinking because it is only in
thinking clearly, accurately, skeptically, and practically that we can
succeed in this adventure.  This gives you a big reason why for critical
thinking- such clear thinking is your primary tool for navigating the
territory of reality.  Knowing that your map and your mapping-processes are
fallible (liable to error), biased in various ways that can distort things,
and that your map is not the territory- now you can step up to the human
adventure to find out what is true and what is not.  This is, of course, the
domain of science - and philosophy and theology and many of the other
"ologies" which seek to study and understand various domains of reality.

Actualizing your highest and best in any one of these domains (psychology,
anthropology, sociology, politics, management, leadership, and so on)
requires that you use your best critical thinking skills to find out what's
real and to separate it from what is myth.  It is about being open to
discovering things that might shake our old attitudes and beliefs and
willing to continually update your thinking.  In this way you can "prove all
things" and "hold fast to that which is good" to quote an old biblical
verse.  It is to search for the truth which can "make you free."

The process of self-actualizing calls for a stance of being open to consider
differences, to release assumptions and prejudices, and to keep checking the
quality and ecology of things.  This way of operating lies at the heart of
NLP, which of course, is a birthchild of the first Human Potential Movement.
This way of operating also describes what it is like to engage in critical
thinking.  Rather than being biased and prejudice, critical thinking skills
enable you to question things, look deep into the assumptions driving the
things people say and do, and putting final conclusions on hold until you
have sufficient information.

All of these things also enables a person to be a good, clear, and clean
thinker.  What kind of a thinker are you?  Given the self-actualization
drive that's innate in every person, everybody has the potential to become a
good thinker: clear, focused, unbiased, open.

"It was found that self-actualizing people distinguished far more easily
than most the fresh, concrete, and idiographic from the generic, abstract,
and rubrized.  The consequence is that they live more in the real world of
nature than in the man-made world of concepts, abstractions, expectations,
beliefs, and stereotypes that most people confuse with the world.  They are
therefore far more pt to perceive what is there rather than their own wishes
..." (P. 153)

Are you ready to develop your critical thinking skills?  

Then get to a good NLP program that puts a lot of emphasis on the
Meta-Model.  When you call to reserve your place, ask how many hours and how
many days will there be on the Meta-Model?  My best book on the Meta-Model
is Communication Magic (2001).

Also, sign up for the Pre-Conference Workshop on Critical Thinking Skills by
Colin Cox.  For Information, contact: Sherran -
<mailto:sherran at apti.com.hk> sherran at apti.com.hk 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

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