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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Critical Thinking: Qualities To Avoid
Friday February 15, 2002

Yesterday I promised to offer a list of qualities of personality, orientation, perspective, or consciousness that should be avoided by self-managers. Here is my list, which I regret to say features characteristics that are all too common in this country and throughout the world.

In preparing this list, I could not help but think of the concluding refrain in the "The Galaxy Song" from the movie, The Meaning Of Life by the Monty Python Flying Circus:

The Universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whiz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know, 12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure How amazingly unlikely is your birth And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, Because there's bugger all down here on Earth.

Here, then, is my list of qualities of personality, orientation, perspective, or consciousness that should be avoided by self-managers:

A conspiracy mindset, as reflected (with great wit) by Shakti Goldberg in his classic book of Halfirmations -- The complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working!
Reliance on claims of miraculous healing, visions, and signs from mystical sources.
A high level of gullibility married to a low level of education and confidence -- the spawning grounds of cults, quacks, frauds, fakes, impostors, pretenders, humbugs, and mountebanks. (Did I leave anybody out?)
Belief in the efficacy of voodoo, chants, potions, horoscopes, crystals, amulets, bloodletting, and all other forms of superstition and pseudo-science.
Credibility given to claims that we are influenced by planetary alignments, aliens, angels, devils, good or other fairies, Easter bunnies, bogey persons, or genies -- including all those critters said to lurk beneath the surface in Iceland. (James H. Haught offers an example of this thought mode: Remember in 1987, when astrologers and other mystics announced 'the Harmonic Convergence,' an alignment of planets coinciding with the ancient Mayan calendar, which was supposed to transform the world with 'galactic beams' of psychic energy? Nothing happened. A skeptical Charleston woman we know refers to the event as 'the Moronic Convergence.')
Insistence that dogmas and creeds be taken on faith coupled with aversion to acknowledging that "sacred" beliefs may be inventions of mere mortals, incomplete, erroneous, and subject to doctrinal deficiencies.
Vulnerability to wishful thinking due to a humdrum existence, a lost sense of wonder, and a predisposition to rely on a guru or just someone older or seemingly wiser whom you think or hope will look out for you.

This concludes my little series of pieces on that most vital of self-managing skills, namely, learning to employ effective critical thinking to all decisions large and small in order to make wise choices that promote optimal well-being, success, and life satisfaction.

Do the right thing, avoid the above and other wrong-headed ways and try always to look on the bright side of life. Speaking of which, I'll end this on the note it began, that is, with lyrics from those wacky Monty Python folks, in this case the final stanza of the song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (composed and sung by Eric Idle):

Always look on the bright side of life... I mean - what have you got to lose?

You know, you come from nothing --you're going back to nothing.

What have you lost? Nothing! Always look on the bright side of life...

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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