As we live our lives we will eventually venture upon situations which cause us to question "How does human thought mislead us from our original intentions?" This concept or question can be arrived upon through both personal and work observations. True Intentions My personal experience with intentions has led me to the conclusion that most of the time people have good or positive intentions and do not mean to hurt others around them. The problems begin with the human mind's rationalizing in order to fulfill intentions. However, the mind is a great tool that can be used for good causes or misused for subpar or evil causes. Reasoning and Our Thoughts
Intentions and thoughts are two difference components of ourselves and it takes sharp discernment to separate one from the other many times. If you can picture a car that requires two other things to function as it was designed to function. A car needs gas and a driver. In this illustration the car represents any aspect of our lives from relationships to work to personal projects, etc. The gas represents the intentions that fuel those aspects of our lives and the driver represents us or more specifically, our thoughts. Inductive and Deductive Reasoning Inductive reasoning starts by making observations and analyzing facts. It arrives at a general conclusion based on this analysis. Deductive reasoning starts with a specific conclusion or
theory and makes observations and analyzes with this in mind. We all probably use both types of reasoning throughout our lives. Rationalization Rationalization is the action of trying to explain and/or justify attitudes and behaviors regardless of the value or appropriateness of the attitude and/or behavior. A lot of times my observation is that we start using inductive reasoning to create a conclusion and then use this conclusion in a deductive way throughout our life experiences to rationalize why we did what we did. The Process and Limited Perception Whether the human ego would like to admit this truth, we all have limited human perception. This is especially true when it comes to being in the middle of situations that can motivate us to get "tunnel vision." In order to get a more objective viewpoint of where our thoughts and resulting attitudes, decisions, and behaviors are taking us, we need to "step outside the situation." Solutions to Limited Perception There are a couple of solutions to this limited perception problem. These can be used alone or in combination with each other.
·0 Faith- When I say "faith" I am thinking about faith in God that can lead us to reasonable faith in ourselves and others. Faith in God can lead us to prayer, meditation, and eventually fruitful thoughts that lead us to new perspectives.
·1 Other "quality people"- Other people who are growing and developing as well into their true selves can give us another point of view that could be helpful. Every person is unique and when they are functioning more or less as their true selves, their perspective can add to our learning.
·2 Personal and Objective Thinking- What I mean by this is that we can create for ourselves our own "checks and balances." Using our own and/or other peoples' checklists, questions, approaches, thought processes can get us "out of the tunnel" and into some fresh thinking and point of views. Summation I believe people in general have good intentions, but our thoughts can lead us astray into unproductive and/or harmful decisions and behaviors. In order to keep our thoughts on track we need to use faith, other quality people, and/or personal and objective thinking. Your Application Which of the previously mentioned resources do you use to help answer the question of how does your human thought mislead you from your original intentions and how often and well do you use these resources?
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