Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

We have lost a lot of value in thinking these days. It is unfortunate, and it is a new trend in society. If you look back into history, in the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire, and even into the classical times with all of the composers, you are going to see that they were all thinkers.

They didn’t write great music, and build empires, and give us all of those great life quotes through Google. They thought about them, analyzed them, and drew up their own conclusions.

You were held in high regards in ancient times if you were a thinker, in fact, that is what many people tried to be. Let’s take a moment now to take a look at one of these great thinkers, and see how his method can help us in this modern day not lose the art of critical thinking.

Socrates was a great philosopher and thinker. It doesn’t really matter who you are or what kind of education you have, if you are in the world today, odds are you know that Socrates was an ancient man, and that he was a thinker.

Socrates had a method to his genius, and that method was simple: Ask questions.

Socrates was a teacher, and he taught his students to ask questions. He never spoon fed them answers, and he never told them what they ought to think, but he did challenge them in what they did think.

For example, if one of his students were to announce that he believed that music was the way it was for a particular reason, Socrates would ask him why that was so. Or he would ask him if that led to another thing, and the student was free to agree or disagree.

If he agreed, Socrates would ask him why, if he disagreed, Socrates would ask him why.

Socrates wasn’t out to point out whether his student were right or wrong, he wanted them to think about why they felt the way they did, and if their conclusions about their subjects were on track or not. Socrates didn’t want a world of people that just spat the answers he gave them back out, he wanted a society of thinkers, where each person brought their own skills to the table.

Put it to work! How to apply Socrates’ method to your own life.

You can spend your entire day reading what the philosophers did with their students to make them think, but then you have to take a moment and ask yourself how this applies to your life, and what you can do to think better.

If you were sitting in Socrates’ class, what would you tell him you were thinking? What questions do you think he would ask you? What would your answers be? You don’t have to be in his class to ask yourself these questions, all you need to do is ask them.

Take the time to think about your problems, and any other thing in your life. Don’t just blindly accept what you hear or read, think about it. Draw your own conclusions, and see where you go from there.

You will be surprised at how many of your problems that seem to be crushing can really be thought through if you sit down and do it.

This can apply to any way that you obtain information. Whether you hear a speaker talking, you watch a documentary, or if you are reading a book. You need to learn to analyze everything.

You don’t take a deep book and read it cover to cover without having to pause every now and then to really think about what you have read. If you do this, you are going to lose a lot of what the author intended for you to have.

Instead, read a couple of pages, and set the book down. Wait a moment, and think about what you are reading. Ask yourself questions… think.

1.Is what I am reading true?

2.Do I agree with it?

3.Does it apply to me and my life?

4.How can I make it apply to me and my life?

5.Is there anything the author is trying to convey that I may have missed?

6.How do I feel about this?

Of course you will make the questions more personal to you as you read, and you will find that your problems are going to be more suited to what you are reading, but the method stays the same.

You need to make your life, and your thoughts, intertwined. Make everything you do matter. Think about the information you are absorbing and how it applies to you where you are right now, and how it applies to where you want to be in the future.

When you learn to view life with a questioning attitude, you are going to realize that you can find a lot of the answers in your own mind, and that you can apply these answers to your life.

It will become a cycle for you, but this time a good cycle that is going to lead to good results.