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To Get Unstuck
Finding out how things really are requires courage, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and meaningful dialogue and the time and effort to apply them.
An exchange of ideas, facts, and opinions disturbs the peace of certainty. It takes time and disciplined effort. Courage is needed to work through fear, question beliefs, and accept the reality of impermanence and instability.
Critical thinking emphasizes cognitive analysis to avoid emotion-based and biased decision-making.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage emotions to promote responsiveness as opposed to reactivity. It supports healthy relationships. Healthy relationships are the foundation for problem-solving and decision-making.
Emotional intelligence is enhanced by critical thinking and critical thinking is enabled by emotional intelligence.
Meaningful Dialogue
Dialogue to seek consensus and better understand other perspectives is essential to getting unstuck.
Meaningful dialogue combines critical thinking and the ability to manage emotions to avoid diverting the discussion into a yelling match or cutting off the dialogue by retreating from the instability created when beliefs and perspectives are questioned.
Ideologues across the political spectrum avoid dialogue because they are convinced that their beliefs are right regardless of the facts. "True believers" cling to the promise of stability and permanence. They are easy prey for ideologues, manipulators, and charlatans.
Mindfully Managing Emotions
Emotional Intelligence (EI) enables meaningful dialogue. Engaging in meaningful dialogue requires that you recognize the emotion-based biases that lead to reactions, opinions, and beliefs and that you overcome the fear, arrogance, or anger that fuels the avoidance of critical thinking.
With a mindfully managed dialogue of opposing views, we can achieve consensus, or at least understanding and mutual respect. Without the dialogue, there is irreconcilable division.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking analyzes information to support decision-making, problem-solving, and mutual understanding of different perspectives. It helps to overcome biases, emotional reactions, and closed-mindedness. It is a foundation for respectful dialogue and mutual understanding.
However critical thinking threatens those who are personally identified with a perspective or belief and are unwilling or unable to question it.
Requirements for Meaningful Dialogue
"... we turn to self-protecting - choosing certainty over curiosity, armor over vulnerability, and knowing over learning." - Brene Brown, from Dare to Lead
Meaningful dialogue with critical thinking requires:
- Active listening - respectfully and mindfully paying attention
- Open-mindedness - willingness to question and change beliefs and accept the uncertainty and paradox of multiple perspectives
- Growth mindset - Open to learning; thinking that failures and challenges are growth opportunities, and feedback is constructive even when negative.
- Self-discipline - emotional intelligence to manage emotions, not jump to conclusions, and take the time and effort to research to uncover facts and relevant information and engage in respectful dialogue.
- Self-awareness - knowing who you are, what you are thinking and feeling, why you are thinking and feeling it. It is the foundation for emotional intelligence and optimal wellness.
- Mindfulness - the ability to step back and calmly and objectively observe to enable focus and the other requirements
The Bottom-line
Don't blindly believe anything. Mindfully investigate.
- Look within and see if you are "stuck" in beliefs and biases.
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Look around, consider the available information, and engage in meaningful dialogue to see things as they really are rather than how they seem or how you would like them to be.
Honor your emotions and your beliefs but avoid being driven by them and by lies and simplistic slogans that make you feel good.
Accept the reality of instability, uncertainty, impermanence, and paradox. Enjoy the dance.
Let your decisions be driven by a desire for truth and compassionate action.
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