Clear thinking is not as easy as you might think. It is a challenge that most people have to go through more so when they have to deal with other stressful issues. Your ability to think can also be affected when you’re feeling tired and overwhelmed. There are several basic things that you can do to help yourself think clearly. Some of them are succinctly discussed below.
Check Your Attitude
Your ability to think clearly will largely depend on your desires. Often, you will find it easy to sit down and think of the strategies that you can adopt to achieve your goals. Of course, this is dependent on if you have goals. When you don’t want to achieve something, it is also easy to think of all the things that you can do not to accomplish this. Therefore, to think clearly, it is imperative to be honest about your goals and ambitions. Is this something that you really want in your life? Ideally, developing the right attitude will be helpful toward bringing clarity in the goals that you wish to attain.
Use Your Passion
There is a good reason why successful people will always advise you to follow your passion. The reality is that you have never heard them tell you to follow your emotions. Your passion toward a particular goal will help you to overcome any challenges associated with it. Passion drains away all the negative thoughts that could deter you from thinking clearly about the task ahead. Conversely, emotions will do just the opposite. Allowing your emotions to get the best of you will only make you feel overwhelmed about what you should do. Usually, you will find yourself focusing more on the obstacles that you must go through. Therefore, to think clearly, it is advisable to use passion to keep your emotions in check.
Use Negative Thinking
It might sound controversial that you should use negative thinking to help you. It is possible. Remember, we are talking about finding the right frameworks to help you understand something better. So it is worthwhile to consider how negative thinking can help clear your mind.
Believe it or not, there is a positive power in negative thinking. When striving to achieve goals, most people will embrace the idea of thinking positively. Certainly, thinking positively works in many ways. It gives your mind a chance to focus your energy on what you can do to ensure you accomplish set goals. Interestingly, negative thinking can help you understand the main reasons why you might not accomplish a particular goal. Therefore, looking at this from a positive perspective, you can take advantage of your negative thinking to bring about positivity.
For instance, consider a scenario where you aspire to work in a competitive industry. If you want to work in one of the best firms in the industry, reflect on some of the reasons why you might not be hired. Some of the reasons that you might list here include your lack of skills in that particular field and your lack of experience. Using these “why not,” you can convert them into “how to.” Therefore, to effectively land on a good job, you will have to take relevant courses and thereafter gain experience by taking on different jobs. So, if you can tap into the positive power of negative thinking, you can help set your mind to focus on what you want.
Use Cool Logic
Achieving a clear focus you need on what you want to achieve might be easy in the short run. Most people find it easy to concentrate for a few weeks or months before losing track of what they are doing. Therefore, as part of ensuring that you maintain a clear focus on what you desire, you should use a cool logic. How does this work? Cool logic relates to the idea of concentrating on the issue at hand. You should not allow anything else to distract you. For example, if you are working on a project, your mind should concentrate on the project and nothing else. Normally, it is easy to get distracted and allow your ego to control how you think. In this case, you will be withdrawn to think about how you are better than others in doing a particular task. As a result, instead of focusing on the task at hand, you will pay too much attention to competing with your colleagues. Ultimately, this will have a negative impact on the outcome of the project.
Challenge Your Preferences
Several presumptive beliefs could affect the clarity of your thoughts. The ideas that you have developed in your mind about a particular issue can deter you from thinking about anything else. A good number of people will want to settle for the most expensive wines simply because they believe in the notion that the price of the bottle determines how the wine tastes. However, this might not be true if you engage in a blind taste test. You might come across something that you will like. The point here is that you should challenge your preferences by trying something that you have never done before. You will be surprised that you could make informed decisions to the least of your expectations.
Think About Thinking
The aspect of being aware of your thought processes is termed as metacognition. For you to think clearly, you should be aware of how you are thinking. Therefore, you shouldn’t allow your thoughts to flow freely without being aware of them. Instead, it is imperative that you plan and assess how you are thinking. The advantage gained through metacognition is that you will enrich your learning experience. For instance, your self-awareness will drive you to think clearly about how to accomplish a particular task.
