Posted on

Who should I vote for?

Developing critical thinking skills is essential because they are skills that we can use in all parts of our lives. Planning at work, negotiating with your teenage children, and choosing a new vehicle are all circumstances where critical thinking skills can influence your outcomes. Deciding on which political candidate to vote for involves a range of critical thinking skills to ensure a well-rounded and informed decision. I recommend evaluating the candidates’ policies, statements, and actions critically. Question the candidate’s assumptions, seek evidence, and consider different perspectives before making your decision. Here are some critical thinking skills required to select a political candidate. 

  1. Analytical Thinking: Break down complex issues into smaller, understandable parts. Compare and contrast candidates’ platforms on various issues like the economy, healthcare, foreign policy, etc.
  2. Research Skills: Gather information from reliable sources. Look into candidates’ backgrounds, voting records, public statements, and endorsements.
  3. Decision-Making: Weigh the pros and cons of each candidate. Consider how their policies align with your values and the needs of the country.
  4. Problem-Solving: Identify the key issues facing the country and assess which candidate has the best plan to address them.
  5. Empathy: Understand the impact of candidates’ policies on different groups within the population. Consider the needs and perspectives of people from various backgrounds.
  6. Logical Reasoning: Make connections between the candidates’ proposed policies and their potential outcomes. Assess whether their arguments are sound and supported by evidence.
  7. Future Orientation: Consider the long-term implications of each candidate’s policies. Think about how their leadership might shape the country’s future.
  8. Ethical Reasoning: Evaluate the candidates’ character, integrity, and ethical standards. Consider the ethical implications of their policies and behavior.
  9. Open-Mindedness: Be willing to consider new information and alternative viewpoints. Avoid confirmation bias by actively seeking diverse opinions.
  10. Communication Skills: Engage in discussions with others to test your ideas and hear different perspectives. This can help refine your thinking and clarify your views.

By utilizing these critical thinking skills, you can make a more informed and thoughtful decision when choosing a political candidate who will represent your interests. This year, we need to address many important issues like abortion, immigration, health care, taxes, judges, the Supreme Court, artificial intelligence, fiscal policy, and inflation.  Use your critical thinking skills to determine who will best represent you, your community, and our country.  

Posted on

Did you know that Trump practices positive thinking?

How can you make positive thinking work for you?

On one hand, Donald Trump is known for his rants of negativity on our public airwaves and of course on twitter. On the other hand, Donald Trump talks with a lot of confidence about what he has done, what he will do, and what is going to happen. In fact Donald Trump actually practices many of the positive thinking principles espoused by Norman Vincent Peale who is the rightmost figure in the next picture. These principles have inspired people to believe in their own capabilities and accomplish great things through significant planning and effort. While Peale emphasizes numerous positive thinking principles in his writings. Three of Peale’s principles are certainly transparent in Trump’s bombast.They are:

  1.   You get what You expect.

Trump believes that his attitude is more important than any problem he faces. He does not seem to think about defeat. According to Peale one should not build obstacles to success in their mind.  This belief gives Trump hope to accomplish improbable tasks; in other words you are overcome because of what you you think. This means self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful.

  1. What we say we experience.

Trump hardly talks about defeat even if he has just lost a major battle. For instance read how Trump describes what happened with the first version of his healthcare bill. He uses words such as victory and winning constantly. Peale stressed that there is a great deal of power in the words you use. Words affect your mood and outlook on things. Therefore, if you use words of pessimism you will create more negativity in your world. If you use optimistic and inspiring words, you will behave and react in a like manner.

  1. Learn only from your success.

Peale suggested that learning from errors would make an individual more inclined to make more errors. In a similar manner, Trumps actions indicate that he thinks it is more important to learn from successes than failures. The belief is such behavior will make it easier to repeat what you did to create the success. To increase your chance of future success take notes about your successful behaviors and practice them as time permits.

Save

Save

Save

Posted on

Do you know why Trump flip-flops all the time?

Regardless of your political beliefs, anyone who has been actively listening to current events knows that President Trump has a habit of changing his position. This behavior pertains to a wide range of topics. For example he insisted that America would not have an active military presence in Syria. Nevertheless, he ordered the bombing of a Syrian airfield last week.  This is not new. President Trump had specified last year that witness immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony was equivalent to committing a crime. Since then he has also back-pedaled on that statement concerning Michael Flynn. This certainly was not the case concerning Hillary Clinton’s staff members last year.

Some may argue that President Trump changes his positions to gain negotiation advantage. Yet, there may there may be other reasons why many of President Trump’s statements are inconsistent with his past rhetoric – cognitive structures. Cognitive structures are mental processes that individuals use to process and understand information. They organize information for learning and recall. Cognitive structures are integral for comprehension and memory.

According to Sternberg (2009), there are three general categories of cognitive structures.

* The first are comparative thinking structures for memorization and classifying.

* The second is symbolic representation structures like math, gestures, dance, and music.

* The third is logical structures like reasoning, cause and effect, evaluation, and problem solving.

We develop cognitive structures  over time through our experiences. We use cognitive structures that support our goals and needs. I suggest that President Trump is using a dynamic evaluation process to maintain a positive self-image. This explains why President Trump stated that there were things in the healthcare bill that he did not particularly like; it was okay that the bill failed to pass.  In the same manner, he uses alternate facts to support bogus claims and denigrate his foes, both of which support his fragile self-image.

Posted on

What are the best brain foods? (Part 2)

Dietary manipulations is a viable strategy for enhancing cognitive abilities.  Researchers have uncovered some of the basic principles that are involved in the actions of certain foods and nutrients on the brain. Incorporating this knowledge into your daily meal planning will improve your cognitive ability or thinking power, now and in the future. Following are a list of nutrients and foods essential for brainpower for this holiday season and beyond.

  • Chlorine – helps maintain a healthy memory function – this nutrient is available in egg yolks, soy beef, chicken, veal, turkey liver, and lettuce.
  • The combination of vitamins C, E, and carotene – taken in an antioxidant vitamin form delays cognitive decline in the elderly available in citrus fruits, several plants and vegetables, calf and beef liver.
  • Calcium, zinc, selenium and high serum calcium – the lack of these nutrients are associated with lower cognitive function- calcium is found in milk. Zinc is available in oysters, in smaller amounts in beans, nuts, almonds, whole grains, and sunflower seeds. Selenium is available in nuts, cereals, meat, fish, and eggs.
  • Copper – low levels of this nutrient is associated with cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Copper is available from oysters, beef/lamb liver, Brazil nuts, blackstrap molasses, cocoa, and black pepper.
  • Iron – treatments of this nutrient normalizes cognitive function in young women. It is found in red meat, fish, poultry, lentils, and beans.
Posted on

What are the best brain foods?

Blogs constantly bombard us with ways to lose weight over the holidays. Some of those suggestions include news you will see is the same old basic list of second hand tips. For instance do not show up starving to a party, choose your indulgences wisely, and be mindful that alcohol has calories. Most of these tips you could have guessed on your own. The rest of them you only needed to hear once. If it really did work, holiday weight gain would not be such an issue! Instead of dressing up the same information with a new picture, this post looks at what the research actually says about how brain food can make you smarter.

Getting to the point. Scientists have often suspected that specific nutrients from food can affect cognitive processes and emotions. These effects of food on cognition help us to determine how best to manipulate our diet in order to promote mental fitness. Diet and other aspects of our daily routine, such as exercise, improve mental function. We now know that particular nutrients found in foods influence cognition by acting on cellular processes that are vital for maintaining cognitive function.

Therefore dietary manipulations is a viable strategy for enhancing cognitive abilities.  Researchers have uncovered some of the basic principles that are involved in the actions of certain foods and nutrients on the brain. Incorporating this knowledge into your daily meal planning will improve your cognitive ability or thinking power. Following are a list of nutrients and foods essential for brainpower for this holiday season and beyond.

  • Omega-3 fatty acids – amelioration of cognitive decline and useful in the treatment of patients with mood disorders. This nutrient is available in salmon, flax seeds, krill, chia, kiwi fruit, butternuts, and walnuts.
  • Flavonoids – improvement of cognitive function. This nutrient is found in cocoa, green tea, Ginkgo tree, citrus fruits, wine (higher in red wine), and dark chocolate.
  • B vitamins – Supplementation with vitamin B6, vitamin B12 or folate has positive effects on memory performance in women. There are various natural sources for this nutrient.
  • Vitamin D – Important for preserving cognition. Fish liver, fatty fish, mushrooms, milk, soymilk, and cereal grains all provide this nutrient.
  • Vitamin E – reduces cognitive decay. Asparagus, avocado, nuts, peanuts, olives, red palm oil, seeds, spinach, vegetable oils, and wheat germ all are viable sources for this vitamin E.
Posted on

The stress free way to overcome math anxiety

 

Mathematics anxiety is often defined as a state of discomfort concerning the performance of mathematical tasks. Researches posit that such circumstances cause stress and have a negative impact on academics (Hubbard & Byler, 2006). This is important because being overstressed inhibits one’s use of their working memory (WM) and attention. As you will recall WM is theorized to have limited capacity. It holds information before we commit it to long-term memory. In this scenario WM holds the symbols, operators, and variables that we manipulate to solve mathematical problems. Attention pertains to one’s ability to block out irrelevant feelings such fear and worry that hinder the storage and retrieval of information that creates knowledge.

The good news is that ordinary people have successfully used stress management techniques to perform well under stressful conditions. You can too. These techniques lessen the formerly mentioned WM and attentional challenges. Scientists have demonstrated the effectiveness of these techniques in various academic settings. The use of progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) has demonstrated significant positive results in controlling stress and anxiety regarding math performance. PMR is a technique that involves tensing and relaxing specific muscle groups in a specific order to decrease the physiological aspects of anxiety while distracting people from their awareness of anxious feelings.

The results of several studies suggest that PMR improves a person’s ability to focus their attention on a central task and execute its required operation while inhibiting unrelated info. PMR training is an effective technique for the reduction of tension, anxiety, and physiological arousal that are associated with math anxiety. The next time you feel anxious about performing a math task try PMR to improve your performance. Here is a sample PMR script for your review.