It’s important to trust the people around you and learn new things with a positive, open attitude. Critical thinking isn’t a barrier to learning new things; it’s a way of carefully measuring the information that comes your way, so that you can find the essential truth. Sometimes that’s a real challenge!

If you imagine that messages are coming to you from many different places, imagine that each message is like a letter. You receive it in your mailbox (whether you asked for it or not!), you can see who sent you the message (most of the time), and the message is wrapped in an envelope. Sometimes it’s a letter, or it could be a pamphlet or CD. After looking at the source and the medium, you look at the content, and you’re ready to decide how much of the message you accept or reject.

As you learn skills and gain experience with critical thinking, the process shapes your outlook, your judgment, and your decisions - you are truly “thinking for yourself.”