Techniques for Evaluation
As an accurate thinker you must scrutinize every bit of information you encounter. You have to realize that some things contain facts while being colored, modified, or exaggerated, either intentionally or carelessly. Any political campaign will demonstrate this point in glorious detail.
You should apply some tests to information you encounter. If you read a book, for example, you should ask questions like these:
1. Is the writer a recognized authority on the subject covered?
2. Did the writer have a motive in writing the book other than imparting accurate information? What is that motive?
3. Does the writer have a profit interest in the subject covered?
4. Is the writer a person of sound judgment or a fanatic?
5. Are there easily accessible sources to check and verify the writer’s statements?
6. Do the writer’s statements harmonize with common sense and experience?
Before you accept anyone’s statements as facts, you must try to find the motive behind those statements. The motive can be completely honorable, but you must still be careful about accepting the statements of overzealous people who have a habit of letting their emotions run wild. Honor alone does not equal accuracy.
You must rely upon your own judgment and be cautious no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not seem reasonable or contradicts your experience, set it aside for further examination.
When you ask others for facts or judgments, try not to disclose the answer you expect or your motives in asking, for people often alter their advice to fit what they assume is their listener’s desire. This process may be innocent or duplicitous, but you should avoid it. Instead of asking, “Do you think it would be possible to send a man to Saturn?” or “How can I send a man to Saturn?” ask, “What do you know about the possibility of sending a man to Saturn?” or even better, “What do you know about space travel?” This example may seem a little absurd, but if you substitute “moon” for “Saturn” in the above sentences, you’ll see evidence of the power of accurate thinking.
Two Big Mistakes
Two opposite qualities are very prevalent in human nature, but each is a major roadblock to accurate thinking.
Credulousness – the habit of believing on the basis of little or no evidence- is a major human fault, for it is fatal to accuracy in thinking. This fault-in both his own people and those of the world-certainly let Hitler build his influence to such horrendous levels. The mind of an accurate thinker is an eternal question mark. You must challenge everyone and everything that influences it.
This does not imply a lack of faith. In fact, it is the greatest expression of respect for the Creator since you recognize that your thoughts are the only thing over which you have been given complete control and you embrace this blessing.
The small minority of accurate thinkers has always been the hope of humanity. For they are the pioneers in whatever they do. They create business and industry, advance science and education, and inspire invention and religion. Emerson said it best:
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man, the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind, are all at the mercy of a new generalization. Generalization is always a new influx of the Divinity into the mind. Hence the thrill that attends it.
When you are an accurate thinker, you are the master, not the slave, of your emotions. You live among other people without giving them the power to control your thinking. You must always be on guard against the human tendency initially to reject an idea because it is unsound but, by dose association with it in the form of family, friends, and coworkers, to endure it, then to embrace it as your own, forgetting its original source and your first evaluation of it.
Your mind will absorb any idea that it is repeatedly subjected to, whether good or bad, right or wrong. As an accurate thinker you can make this trait work for you in the sense that whatever you think today becomes what you are tomorrow. This is the essence of the power of a definite major purpose and positive mental attitude.
The other common weakness in most people’s thinking is a tendency to disbelieve anything they do not understand.
When the Wright brothers announced that they had built a machine that could fly and asked newspaper reporters to come to Kitty Hawk and see for themselves, no one would come. When Guglielmo Marconi revealed that he could send a message through the air without wires, some of his relatives had him sent to a psychiatrist for examination. They were convinced that he had lost his ability to reason.
Contempt prior to examination is a trap that will limit your opportunity, applied faith, enthusiasm, and creativity.
Do not confuse a suspension of belief in something unproved with a certainty that anything new is impossible. Accurate thinking is designed to help you understand new ideas or unusual facts, not to keep you from examining them.
Accurate thinking depends heavily on several other principles of success: definiteness of purpose, self-discipline, prompt decision making, and a positive mental attitude. It also plays an important role in the next principle, controlled attention, which will bring even more focus to your efforts toward your definite major purpose.
Source: Keys to Success by Napoleon Hill