How To Think (Part 2)

“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” – Bertrand Russell

Yesterday, we made a chilling statement:

“Once you start thinking, you’ll realize you’ve never thought before.”

When I first heard it years ago, it nearly split my mind in two.

Like dominoes, the gears of my mind finally tumbled into place, giving way to a stunning realization:

I had never been taught how to think, I had only been taught what to think.

By my school teachers, who put information into my mind like data into a computer.

By business coaches, who trained me to follow “best practices” and to never “reinvent the wheel.”

By society, who programmed my values and beliefs, reducing my reality to tunnel vision.

I started seeing it everywhere I looked:

My friends, my family, my peers — even some of the “smartest” people I knew…

…Were locked in this entirely referential mode of thinking:

Instead of thinking for ourselves, we simply referenced information we’d heard from others, and claimed it as our own.

Like a computer that can only reference the data put into it…

A student who only memorizes…

A chef who only follows recipes…

A doctor who only prescribes by the book…

An entrepreneur who only copies his competitors…

A voter who’s only opinions are what they’ve heard on CNN (ouch)…

A human brain turned into a dictionary.

Looking back, it may have been the single most explosive realization of my life:

Referencing is not thinking — it is outsourcing your thinking.

(to others who outsourced their thinking to others, who outsourced their thinking to others, who…)

And the echo of that explosion has reverberated across every dimension of my life…
​
…Transforming my business, my creativity, my relationships, and my entire experience of being alive.

As the Buddha (allegedly) said:

With your thoughts you create the world.

There is nothing our thinking doesn’t touch, which means there is, arguably, nothing more important than developing our ability to think.

Which leads us to the obvious question:

What is thinking, and how do we do it?

I’ll see you back here tomorrow for the answer.

T
​
​P.S. Here’s a link to Part 1, in case you missed it yesterday.