How and why we think and reason? How do mentors help us think better?

Dear Sister: The reason why people learn is because they want to reason. This is all because thinking when compared to reasoning appears to be the oldest form of generating thoughts and rarely logic. A thought is a fragment of the thinking process. It is a dot making a line. Since we have to generate several thousand of these dots a day, we believe that we think a lot. Especially a lot. We do not. New thoughts and, therefore, new ideas are rare.

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Back in early 2021, I am so sure you inquired about my keeping a personal diary. I refused to answer that question. Not some minutes later I was looking for a knife. This was the utensil we had for peeling cucumbers and I had to seriously look for it. I could not quite get to find it after opening all the drawers in the kitchen.

She had to ask, “What are you looking for?”

I had few words to say which I had to plunge into my diary then. “Not finding it does not mean you are looking for it. It mostly means you are not finding it.” I had to activate looking for it to find it. I mean to find the knife It wasn’t about the whole kitchen, it was about where the knife was. This knife in this context is fresher and newer thoughts that you don’t have to reason about to come up with them. We walk down the blind alleys, we complicate escape routes and we are not quite good at troubleshooting our way out of cluelessness. But escape routes are there waiting for us and surrounding us.

Why are you looking for it? Once the question is answered. You must move to your next. “Whys” are important when you are looking for something that you must find. They provide a green light to “hows”. (Keep reading I will get this).

Again, I need to warn you that I am not an expert on how we humans think. I have had to come up with a well-maintained personal diary in 2018. From reading the diary over and over I learned that fresher and newer thoughts are a fraction of a fraction. These fresher and newer thoughts must be allowed to survive and above all be helpful. They are a product of “whys” leading into “hows” not “becauses”, and “hows” being answered.

The function of a true mentor.

The mentor’s function is to drag the one he mentors to the very awareness of a fraction of a fraction of all thoughts or, should I say, pure gold. It is the duty of the mentored to preserve the said fraction of a fraction and nature it to produce bigger items. New mindset-changing and positive beliefs are built this way. And once they are there they change who you are. You can become anything when you are nothing.

I think I said this to you before: What the heart believes, the mind thinks and the body acts. Believing is willingness. Then to our younger brother, I think I urged him to welcome the fact that he too can be wrong. You must be up to the reality and be ready to say to yourself “I failed because I…” instead of “I failed because they…” When you forget to consider yourself Miss/Mr. Correct you cannot forget to correct yourself. (Newer thoughts multiplies. You are digging deep into the self and being responsible. You have to be responsible. That being said I do not encourage you to be responsible when you should not). But you are also willing to build abilities that relate to being responsible, including thinking and acting responsibly. What you think about is what you are willing to think about.

As for me, that very personal diary was my number one item for enhancing my thinking. As I travelled my seven years of failing to establish an income out of blogging and not giving up on the goal the diary brought consciousness. It helped me to live conscious of the fact that I was living. My diary helped with the facts concerning the life I was living. As your mentor allow me to tell you this, those who deprive themselves of the details of the things happening in their lives do not get the benefits of embodying the self, that is knowing the self. A mentor seeks to have the mentored see the benefits of knowing the self.

Your mind requires a palette of some sort on which to deposit newer thoughts. When you don’t mind, you are worse off to one who has a detailed list of her earnings and expenses all year round even when you are all failing to make ends meet. The difference is one has a palette to think about which you chose not to have. Before she settles to think about her financial issues she already has raw materials which otherwise utilised sustainably, bring to life their magic.

The Why parallelism: How thinking works?

Thoughts, each being a tiny dot, make up a line that is only interrupted by unconsciousness or death. Among them, are thoughts being senseless. We each have a chance to get to “why is it senseless”. Again, as a matter of disclaiming, I need to tell you that I am not an expert in the field of thinking. I am sharing with you the observations I made from my complex diary. There in my SubjectMe diary something I prefer to call the Why parallelism came to my senses.

The senseless can also be a product of what drives your thinking, the mindset. In each situation or series of situations we each have the senseless to come up with. What makes a difference in your life is also the type of senseless you have managed to land yourself in. You find senseless in the one you have loved, a toxic relationship may be the result. You find senseless in society’s beliefs on wealth, you have higher chances of getting rich.

As the senseless makes its progression, it is communicating to your system its senseless status.

This progression (in the diagram above) leads to the acceptance of the fact that the senseless is senseless. I quite believe that in most cases after this acceptance no further development takes place. In this case, the senseless may cause more harm than cure to you.

In some instances, the question “Why is it senseless” is allowed to come on board, forming its progression line that is parallel to the senseless progression line. That becomes normal progression.

The senseless progression line must remain in progression until sense is discovered. The why progression line reaches an end when answers have been found. But since becauses are only an explanation they do not bring an ending to the senseless progression line. How can it make sense to become a new progression line taking over from the why progression line? The ending of the how progression line gives the senseless sense. This progression is for curious minds. (I recommend a detailed work on one of the most curious men known to have existed; How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps To Genius Every Day by Michael J. Gelb.

Other than making you a daVinci, unlocking the senseless can guarantee you a happier life and success. The process of transitioning from the senseless into sense requires patience and a conscious and positive mindset that welcomes challenges more than comfort zones.

The thing with beginning with whys is you get more questions and answers from which to construct your hows. The hows then give you something at the end to shed light on the darkness. Finding out is not a passive process. You must be active, curious and ready to go through a lot.

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