How does critical and creative thinking enhances the quality of an individuals life?

Answer 1

Critical and creative thinking is a skill that needs to be inculcated in the minds

of all individuals as it is necessary for individual development. In our lives today, we have ignored this aspect of our development and have taken to a narrow closed minded way of thinking that in a turns us into ³Zombies´ as per say doing everything without a sense of reason. This in turn makes us slaves to a backward and archaic system which many of us are afraid to break free from and spread the horizon of our minds. Dr. Tom Namwambah describes critical thinking as, ³The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying, analysing, synthesizing and /or evaluating information gathered from or generated by observation, experience, reflection reasoning or communication as a guide to belief and action.´ He describes creative thinking as ³a process committed to formation of possible solutions to a problem or possible explanations to a phenomenon.´ Therefore, critical and creative thinking is a process of carefully examining a problem or a situation and finding a possible solution or explanation for it. In critical and creative thinking we combine carefully thought out knowledge and innate skill to form a solution. In this way we positively enhance our individual development .A critical and creative thinker is curious. This curiosity brings about questions that she may pose to themselves or to a source of knowledge e.g. a teacher. She tries to look at the question from many different angles and comes up with more than one answer to the question. These answers are reliable as they are well analyzed and researched. Such a skill is important as it helps the individual make well informed decisions rather than rush into situations which may affect her development. For example rather than drop out of school completely due to a lack of fees a critical thinker chooses to look for a job and save enough money for the school fees .Many times we tend to rush into judgment and often are passed by chances of positively developing our lives. We tend to look at the available options and dismiss them for being too radical and even at times too simple. We neglect these opportunities on the basis of unfounded biases. We may be biased towards the source of the information or the information itself. Through critical and creative thinking we are able to identify our biases and take control of them while at the same time suspending judgment so as to gain analyze and many of the times gain from the information given.Without the skill of critical and creative thinking many of us would crumble under pressure and simply give up. By being a critical and creative thinker a person is able to develop perseverance even in the most difficult situation. A critical thinker understands that life is like a rose bush; full of challenges and crookedness but in the midst of all that, it sill boasts of a beautiful rose. She knows that every challenge eventually ends and makes no haste to give up.

When faced with people or ideas that we don't necessarily agree with we tend to become defensive and tend not to tolerate the people or idea. A critical and creative thinker has the virtue of tolerance. This is an important virtue to have when interacting with other people .She tolerates ambiguity and helps the person express himself and come up with a solution .A critical and creative thinker sees the good in every bad situation. Rather than see the problem they see the possible lessons and the possible solutions to a problem. A critical thinker will never say that nothing good will come out of something because even with no solid possible outcome, the experience gained is immeasurable .Lastly, a critical thinker has intellectual humility. She admits that she does not know and therefore is open to learn. The moment we profess ignorance on a certain topic, then at that moment we are able to learn. A critical thinker acknowledges the boundaries of her own knowledge and does not let herself be driven by egocentrism that may hinder the process of learning .From the above discussion we are able to deduce that thinking critically and creatively do s greatly enhance individual development.