The importance of critical thinking skills



The importance of critical thinking skills

Thesis Statement

Critical Thinking is the ability to learn the reality by asking the right questions which in turn, help us to make informed & right decisions and comprehend & solve complex life problems.

Introduction

Critical thinking helps you to make important choices in a rightful manner after taking into consideration complete background information and available options. Critical thinker employs a systematic process by taking all the important factors and elements into consideration which are relevant to the situation/decision at hand, educate him/her with all the ground realities and facts, understand all the available options, evaluate their merits and their respective impact on his life as well as on the lives of the people around him and then choose the one with positive impact on his and other people's lives (Van Gelder, 2005).

Our lifetime experiences and knowledge develops our intuition, reasoning and common sense, three very important things if employed can be of great help in making rational choices in our lives. Critical thinking in plain terms is about consciously employing and utilizing our intuition, reasoning and common sense. It equips us with factual information. There are two kinds of information, one is based on facts and the other one is subjective and based on opinions. Critical thinkers know the difference between these two and separate them while making their decisions. Decisions based on subjective information can be disastrous in long term as subjective information is not based on facts rather on opinions. Life is all about making decisions and leading successful life is all about making right kind of decisions. We make numerous important decisions in our life, most of the time on daily basis. So employing the right kind of knowledge to arrive on right kind of options is the key to make the right decisions, critical thinking helps us to do it (Pithers & Soden, 2000).

Discussion

A focused mind is a powerful tool. Through focused mind you can tap into your subconscious which can help you to build great things for you. Always remember, an inventive and creative mind is always a focused one. An unfocused mind leaves room for other things which most of the time do not matter in the situation you are in. You are trying to study but a thought of logging in to the facebook/twitter to check out the latest happenings will constantly create a problem for you to focus on studies which is more important for you. This is just one situation we are talking about, there are numerous situations we face in life which holds an “unwanted” or “unimportant” element in them. Through critical thinking, we need to focus our minds into the important elements of the situation and mindfully ignoring the unimportant ones. Thinking critically with focused mind is only way to achieve your goals which you have set in your life (Paul & Elder, 2006).

You have to make small decisions like what you will wear tomorrow? And big decisions like which ...