You Are What You Are Thinking! Or Don't You Believe?

By Okechukwu Okugo

What is erroneous thinking? It describes a pattern or ways of thinking shaped by inaccurate, untrue or false misconceptions. It also involves a thinking process that strays from a wise or right path.

Thoughts and thought processes, based on ideas, opinions, notions etc., that are mistaken, incorrect, wrong or containing errors, and straying from what is moral, decent and proper can also be described as erroneous thinking.

Our background, life experiences, family or cultural beliefs, who we grew up and associate with as friends, what religion we are, our political views, all contribute to shape how our minds think through; or what we formulate in our minds. And this becomes our predominant thoughts, that invariably shape our actions.

Some other thinking patterns are acquired later on in life; for example, through what we continue to read and imbibe.
The media also exert such a powerful influence on people's thinking patterns.

But is erroneous thinking bad?

People act majorly the way they think. When the stimuli which propagates one to act is contaminated with ignorance or error, the resultant action invariably would stray from what is proper.

Twisted thinking affects the way one looks at things. It can make one see a negative, and even a positive event, as a never-ending pattern of defeats or failures.

One can hold erroneous thoughts about oneself, which can result to irrational patterns of thinking that can cause one to feel bad, and sometimes may lead one to act in self-defeating ways.

Besides, radicalization, bias, prejudices, injustices, discrimination, bigotry, xenophobia etc. are all products of erroneous thinking patterns or polarized thoughts.

Erroneous thinking makes one point at an innocent source, as the actual source from which its perceived woes or problems come from.
It makes one hate, and blame innocent persons as the root cause of something, which they even do not know anything about.

Erroneous thinking makes one assume things that are far out of reality; and use their wrong data to prejudice a person, place or thing.

But if things were actually gotten in the exact light as it were, the real situation would be known, which would have prevented the erroneous thinker from taking the wrong steps or acting the wrong way, and most of all, making solutions more easily attainable.

There are various ways to change or prevent erroneous thinking, some of which are:

1. Allowing oneself imbibe or checking out new facts or information about a people or thing and using the new facts to compare what had been preconceived: This would help one to sieve out, easily, wrong notions; and trying out the verification  of new facts.
When one removes bias, and embarks on a re-assessment of something, based on new experiences through interactions, it can make one know first hand, the real way of life of a people, or catch the right glimpse of something.

Most times the new experiences gotten from such interactions are usually far from what had been previously thought, conceived or believed.
Giving oneself the opportunity to learn or observe firsthand a certain people, place or thing can change erroneous thinking.

2. Believing in one's abilities and capabilities, knowing that there is no mountain too high to climb. Knowing there is no problem without solution, and the outcome of every situation depending solely on how it is handled; can help change any erroneous thinking about oneself and one's abilities.




3. Opening oneself to reading or imbibing new facts and figures. Most times, one had discovered through reading, information they were utterly ignorant about before. In fact majority of the thinking we formulate in our minds today are usually from books, magazines, TV shows or shaped from what we take in from the media; and now we have the social media, which would evolve into the super media.
But there should be caution. One needs to be careful or courteous about what he or she allows themselves to be fed with. Do not continue to expose oneself to negative, biased or hate-coated messages, from any source, because it can permeate; and with time change how one thinks and acts.

Whereas there are those who either know that they don't know; yet, are not ready to learn/change; or don't know that they are ignorant (thinking largely what they held so tenaciously in their hearts and practice are factual); yet are not open to new ideas, thoughts or change.
They basically resist taking in new facts or knowledge and as such are relaxed in their ignorance.

To the learning of new things, there is no end. To the uncovering of new facts or information, there can be no stop; that is why it is not good for one to shut him or herself out to new facts and investigations.

Can someone try reaching out to the people he or she really had been prejudiced about or stereotyped; or places oneself had been biased about?
It might be surprising to learn that all peoples are lovable. It might be amazing to find out, that new environment holds so many wonders, one would never had discovered, had he or she not made the move to check things out themselves.


Source: www.inspirized.com

At one point or the other, it might be discovered everyone once had an erroneous belief about something, until we knew better.

Read books, investigate, "de-bias" the mind, mingle oneself. Test out long held preconceived opinions and beliefs.

That we believe and practice something right from childhood, does not make it out-rightly the right thing.
It is not wrong to question or challenge deeply ingrained, preconceived dogmas, ideas and opinions particularly, the ones one was brought up with.

We need to open up ourselves to verify and investigate them to be sure they are based on reality. And not cleaving blindly to it with all our hearts.

And one sure thing, if one feels more upset or worried, the more he or she thinks about a situation, it may be an indicator, you may want to consider the possibility of thinking in a different way.

Whatever one exchanges for the truth is worth it. Not just because of the popular declaration that ignorance of the law is no excuse; rather because of the fact that ignorance misleads; ignorance kills.