Welcome to the official launch of TLJ – Tonterias Las Justas. Your weekly dose of common sense to live better. Express sessions (less than 15 mins) discussing sex, money, spirituality, relationships and some current events. Very practical and not politically correct.

Since it’s our first episode together, I’ll tell you a bit about me. I’m Stephanie Melenciano, your mental trainer helping you to create your solutions.

What takes a business consultant and psychologist to embark on this journey? Well, I’ve seen numerous clients, colleagues and friends sabotaging their goals due to an erroneous mental discourse and treating isolated symptoms instead of the whole of the person. I’ve seen this in all sectors, countries, cultures, socioeconomic and educational levels. If you’re tired of going round the same things without reaching better conclusions, I’ve come to help.

I’ve made countless errors, tried even more things and I put all of my knowledge and experience at your service to save you time and give you a push towards your goals.

Returning to our present theme though, to make our future encounters more productive, I’ve decided to start from the base. Today and in the next chapter, we will explore aspects of critical thinking.

This first episode is divided into three parts:

1.   A definition of critical thinking and why it matters.

2.   The benefits of applying it.

3.   A practical application for today

Let’s start with “what is critical thinking”. There are many definitions, but let’s use the following to understand ourselves: the capacity to analyze and reflect on a subject objectively in order to extract its truth and incongruencies.

Taking this into account, why is critical thinking important?

There are thousands of species on the Earth and the factor that differentiates us from all of them is our incredible frontal lobe that gives us extraordinary reasoning capabilities. Our critical thinking is our mayor distinction as a race.

Funny enough, the inability to apply all of our capacity leaves us in endless life loops. You can see this in our relationships, conflicts, work and even on a macro level in our societies. The most effective intervention for those loops is just a little critical thinking because it forces reflection and objectivity, that is seeing the situation from the outside. We will go into further detail in the coming chapter.

Another danger of the failure to use this tool is that is makes us excessively vulnerable to any external input. We become an easy target for exploitation and manipulation. Surprisingly that what gives us the most power as humans we under rate it and even give it away to others to choose for us.

Now let’s see how we can put it to use. As before mentioned, we would avoid endless loops. But going a bit further, what do we gain? Time, of course. And our super power – creativity.

The ability to reason, reflect and analyze situations, questions, statements, etc., unleashes our creative force to create, draw and imagine alternatives. This might seem insignificant, but if you review our history as a species, the leaps forward have been ignited by asking questions and searching for solutions. The benefits aren’t realized by saying “yes” to everything and without lifting your head to observe your surroundings. It simply doesn’t happen.

And lastly, how can we strengthen our muscle today? I believe firmly that everything is trained, the good and the bad. If I want better results in my life I will need to train other habits and actions to those that I normally apply. I like the word train because in the same way a muscle takes form and gets stronger with exercise, the same happens with our character. I’m going to read you a tale to illustrate today’s application....