By Matata Mercy
There is this analogy of thinking like a group and it is commonly refered to as groupthink.
This simply means that you do what the group that you have subscribed subscribed to does.
If the group that you belong to are smokers and you do not like the smell or taste of cigarettes, you adjust accordingly.
You start enjoying the habit of smoking because everyone in the group thinks it's cool to smoke.
When I was a kid, this was how I made my decisions, I did what my friends thought was cool.
I remember one time after school, we left and went with my friends to attend a birthday party.
The party was held at one of my friend's place and the party ended in the wee hours of the morning.
I had not told anyone at home that I was going to attend a birthday party.
The following day, the journey home became long for me, what was I going to tell my parents?
Where did I spend the night? These questions and more were on my mind.
When I reached home, I was asked where I spent the night and my answer was at my friend's place, we had a party.
Then my dad asked me a question:If all your friends jumped off a cliff,would you also follow suit?
I was silent and I did not know what to say or tell him?
My dad was literally telling me to think for myself and avoid the mentality of groupthinking.
Thinking for yourself is something that is actually discouraged in our schools.
The school system suppresses this unknowingly by punishing students who think independently.
Students are not allowed to critic anything that they are taught.
In actual sense, the teachers and lecturers are the know it all whom we could literally call the gods.
Although it is still possible for us to find students who think independently in schools and universities.
These are the ones I would call the rebels, the students who are trying to do the things they believe are right irrespective of the opinions of others.
Independent thinking is important because some careers require it.
When you embrace indepent thinking, you will start having original thoughts and these are the thoughts that are vital in certain careers.
For example if you want to be a scientist, you cannot gather information from another person's research and then you claim it as your own.
As a scientist you need to come up with new theories and inventions that have never existed.
If you want to be an essayist, you cannot write about the things that people already know.
Or else your essay will be boring.
You need to write about something that people do not know.
Write about something new. This also applies to startups.
Startup founders and early employees of the company are independent minded.
When everyone else thinks your idea is right, then there could already be companies that exist.
As a startup, you need to work on ideas that most people believe will not succeed or appears silly but you believe in it.
So is it possible to become independent minded when you were initially not?
Yes it is possible. One way of becoming independent minded is to become curious.
Try to explore the things that interest you,the topics that amaze.
As you venture into new things, you will be able to start thinking independently.
Bringing ideas from other fields to new ones, will give you a new way of looking at things.
Another could be by meeting different kinds of people.
When I come across different people, I do not only focus on the conversation but I try to interprete their thoughts.
This helps me to know if there is something that they know that most people do not know.
If I find that they are very knowledgable, I will want to learn more about what they know. I think the best compass here is curiosity.
I would say, do not do what you love but do what you are curious about.
Truth betold, unfashionable ideas are most likely to lead some where where the results will be interesting.
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