How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

WHY YOU SHOULD QUESTION THE ACCEPTANCE OF POPULAR
THINKING
I’ve given you some broad reasons for questioning the acceptance of popular
thinking. Now allow me to be more specific:

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1. Popular Thinking Sometimes Means Not Thinking
My friend Kevin Myers sums up the idea of popular thinking by saying, “The
problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all.” Good
thinking is hard work. If it were easy, everybody would be a good thinker.
Unfortunately, many people try to live life the easy way. They don’t want to do
the hard work of thinking or pay the price of success. It’s easier to do what other
people do and hope that 
they
thought it out.
Look at the stock market recommendations of some experts. By the time they
publish their picks, most are following a trend, not creating one or even riding its
crest. The people who are going to make money on the stocks they recommend
have already done so by the time the general public hears about it. When people
blindly follow a trend, they’re not doing their own thinking.

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2. Popular Thinking Offers False Hope
Benno Muller-Hill, a professor in the University of Cologne genetics
department, tells how one morning in high school he stood last in a line of forty
students in the schoolyard. His physics teacher had set up a telescope so that his
students could view a planet and its moons. The first student stepped up to the
telescope. He looked through it, but when the teacher asked if he could see
anything, the boy said no; his nearsightedness hampered his view. The teacher
showed him how to adjust the focus, and the boy finally said he could see the
planet and moons. One by one, the students stepped up to the telescope and saw
what they were supposed to see. Finally, the second to last student looked into
the telescope and announced that he could not see anything.
“You idiot,” shouted the teacher, “you have to adjust the lenses.”
The student tried, but he finally said, “I still can’t see anything. It is all black.”
The teacher, disgusted, looked through the telescope himself, and then looked
up with a strange expression. The lens cap still covered the telescope. None of
the students had been able to see anything! 
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Many people look for safety and security in popular thinking. They figure that
if a lot of people are doing something, then it must be right. It must be a good
idea. If most people accept it, then it probably represents fairness, equality,
compassion, and sensitivity, right? Not necessarily. Popular thinking said the
earth was the center of the universe, yet Copernicus studied the stars and planets
and proved mathematically that the earth and the other planets in our solar
system revolved around the sun. Popular thinking said surgery didn’t require
clean instruments, yet Joseph Lister studied the high death rates in hospitals and
introduced antiseptic practices that immediately saved lives. Popular thinking
said that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, yet people like Emmeline
Pankhurst and Susan B. Anthony fought for and won that right. Popular thinking
put the Nazis into power in Germany, yet Hitler’s regime murdered millions and
nearly destroyed Europe. We must always remember there is a huge difference
between acceptance and intelligence. People may say that there’s safety in
numbers, but that’s not always true.
Sometimes it’s painfully obvious that popular thinking isn’t good and right.
Other times it’s less evident. For example, consider the staggering number of
people in the United States who have run up large amounts of debt on their credit
cards. Anyone who is financially astute will tell you that’s a bad idea. Yet
millions follow right along with the popular thinking of buy now, pay later. And

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so they pay, and pay, and pay. Many promises of popular thinking ring hollow.
Don’t let them fool you.

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