In the introduction to his bestselling book, “Predictably Irrational”, psychologist Dan Ariely presents an interesting analogy for understanding the kind of job he does:
“Why experiments? Life is complex, with multiple forces simultaneously exerting their influences on us, and this complexity makes it difficult to figure out exactly how each of these forces shapes our behavior. For social scientists, experiments are like microscopes, or strobe lights. They help us slow human behavior to a frame-by-frame narration of events, isolate individual forces, examine those forces carefully and in more detail. They let us test directly and unambigously what makes us tick”
As humans, while we mentally assent to the fact that there are many forces that influence the way we act, we lead lives that suggest otherwise. For the greater part of each day, we move around wrapped up in our heads. As it were, our minds are in a constant state of fluttering mental clutter. We like to think that we are in control, that we know what we want and that we know what to do per time. However, our experiences indicate otherwise. As time progresses, we develop faulty mental models founded on errors, hearsay, traditions and myths and we wonder why we experience the same results as our progenitors.
As Dan Ariely indicates in the aforementioned quote, a powerful way to have a better understanding of your behavior is to slow down the actions that make up your behavior, and observe the building blocks that constitute those actions. This is a very interesting recommendation for improving our behaviors. Unfortunately, two problems arise from this. First of all, many of us are not social scientists. We do not have the tools (or funds) to set up elaborate experiments for tracking our actions. Secondly, how do we ‘slow down’ our behaviors? Unless we are some reality TV star, we do not spend our waking hours being followed by camera crews who relentlessly record our life stories.
So, how then can we slow down our behaviors? The answer is embedded in the habit of deliberate reflective thinking.
Reflective Thinking Can Make You President
In July 2004, then junior US Senator Barack Obama gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. The title of the speech was ‘The Audacity of Hope’ and it literally transported Obama into national significance. Two years later, Obama published the book “The Audacity of Hope”, where he elaborated on the themes, ideologies and thought patterns that influenced his 2004 speech. By January 20 2009, Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office at the White House as the 44th President of the United States.
As a disclaimer, becoming the POTUS involves much more than speaking at a national convention and writing a book. However, one needs to look no further than Obama’s book, ‘The Audacity of Hope’ before appreciating the fact that the man was an ardent reflective thinker. In her review for the book, literary critic Michiko Kakutani has the following to say:
“[Barack Obama] is that rare politician who can actually write – and write movingly and genuinely about himself… [He] strives in these pages to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense… while articulating these ideas in level-headed, non-partisan prose. That, in itself, is something unusual, not only in these venomous pre-election days, but also in these increasingly polarized and polarizing times”
In December 2018, I also arrived at the same conclusion with Kakutani after reading “The Audacity of Hope”. The man had an unparalleled clarity in his thoughts that could only arise from deliberately developing the habit of consistent reflective thinking. As a good example of Obama’s depth of insight, consider some of his thoughts and ideas concerning hard work during his conversations on values and race,
“All the money in the world won’t boost student achievement if parents make no effort to instill in their children the values of hard work and delayed gratification… Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare – not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity and opportunities for growth in people’s lives.”
Through reflective thinking, Obama was able to identify the factors that set him up for success as an African American in a society that was setup to sabotage African Americans. He was able to consistently freeze aspects of his past and deliberately mine for golden nuggets in the individual frames that made up his life. He did this with critical thinking and unparalleled objectivity. Through his habit of reflective thinking, Obama learned, from his past and from the annals of history, steps he could take to improve his life and that of an entire race. History would be a judge of his political career.
How Effective Reflective Thinking Is Done
The first step to reflective thinking is having a consciousness of your ability to think. The vast majority of people seem to lack the awareness of their capacity for thinking about the thoughts running through their minds. This is due to the fact that many of us lead lives with a reactive paradigm. As events unfold in our physical and social environments, we respond with actions and behaviors that we deem to be appropriate to the event. With time, we develop a reactionary habit and as a result, we are constantly in a state of overwhelm, frustration and unrest. The desirable alternative would be to take proactive measures to ensure that we are aware of our thoughts and we actually reflect on them. Little wonder the Bible strongly admonishes in 2 Corinthians 13:5a, “Examine yourselves…prove your own selves.” One powerful way to do this is by manipulating elements of your physical/social environment, such that you set yourself up for reflective thinking. The truth is that you are not going to engage in productive reflection while you are mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed. More often than not, you would need to woo the lesson from your reflection as part of the process. By engaging in the simple act of selecting a specific time and place where you would go for the sole purpose of reflective thinking, you would find yourself reaping the benefits of reflective thinking.
The next step towards reflective thinking is harnessing the power of
After proactively being aware of your capacity to engage in thought, as well as equipping yourself with the tools for journalling, you need to break down your actions and behaviors in response to varying scenarios during the course of your day. Consider how you felt. Were you calm? Were you under presure? Did you think through before saying something? Also think about the motives powering the aspects of your behavior. Were you trying to deceive the other party? Did you feel inspired? Did your behaviors align with your values and ideals? With the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17) as your thermometer, you would be able to discern instances where your behavior left a lot to be desired, as well as instances where the muscles of your character were strengthened.
It is important to emphasize that this would not be easy. Especially with the fact that many of us do not proactively spend time in deliberate thought. Most times, we are either worrying about things that are out of our control, or things that are not important. However, when you proactively embrace the very idea of reflective thinking, you automatically put yourself among the top 1% of individuals who lead lives powered by the batteries of clear thoughts. These are the ones who will not be casualities of faulty mental models because they know the power in observing their past actions, attitudes and behaviors – frame by frame.
