Washing Our Hands and Polishing Our Minds

Most of us understand the importance of personal hygiene. While we may or may not wash our hands with regularity, brush our teeth a couple of times each day, and avoid coughing on others when we are ill, we know that unwelcome infections are lurking in our environment, ready to pounce.

The CDC warns us that poor hygiene can cause unpleasant encounters with athlete’s foot, body lice, chronic diarrhea, pinworms, scabies, and ringworm. We are taught by most parents at an early age to protect ourselves by a few healthy hygiene habits.

But what about the threats to our beliefs, conclusions, and decisions (BCD’s) when we allow habitual mental flaws to govern our thinking? Neither physical nor mental health occur automatically. Somehow, either from coaching or modeling we need to learn threats to our effective functioning.

Critical thinking is a form of polishing our minds and then applying a sealer on top of what we have learned so that we protect ourselves from pervasive self-deception and error.

Critical thinking is the antidote to clean the mind of clutter and omnipresent scams, manipulations, and misinformation.