by Bill Cottringer 

     Building on what we have in common always seems to be more productive than over-focusing on the sometimes annoying, noisy and irritating differences we have between us. Two early psychologists gave us some important clues about what we all have in common in living our lives. Abraham Maslow gave us the hierarchy of essential needs we all seek to satisfy. These are safety and security, physical comfort, belonging, self-esteem, love, meaning and self-actualization

     Next BF Skinner gave us the main game plan that life operates under—a system of behavior modification—where right choices get rewarded and wrong ones get everything else. Of course, we probably shouldn’t dismiss Sigmund Freud’s contribution of understanding pathology so we could eventually see the whole picture to include the wellness that positive psychology is currently emphasizing.

     More recently, William Glasser identified the three sources of our unhappiness as being the irritation from poor interpersonal relationships, not satisfying our essential needs, and trying to change parts of reality we don’t like, before understanding and accepting them as they really are. After Glasser, Martin Seligman introduced his idea of learned optimism as the best way to increase happiness. We can do this by learning not to view the bad things that happen as being permanent, personal or pervasive. 

     Then came Robert McKee, a Yale literature professor, who named the three categories of conflicts that are part of everyone’s life story. These are the conflicts between us vs. life, us vs. others and us vs. ourselves. The only differences that emerge with these important commonalities are the approaches we use, the efforts we make, and the results we get.  

     So, we are all on a journey to close the gap between where we are and where we want to be in satisfying our essential needs. Fortunately, others before us developed a sound prescription for making the journey go easier and quicker. Below are the big three gap closers that seem to work best:

1.   Critical Thinking.       

          Critical thinking has always been needed back to the time when the early Greek Philosophers were struggling to understand perplexing problems like the meaning of life and attempting to answer difficult moral questions about right and wrong. But the present-day demand for critical thinking has become urgent for us all, being prompted by several major inter-related paradigm shifts and trends happening in today’s world. Some of these are the questioning of values, evolution of the Information Age, a dramatic shift from a competitive win-lose mentality to a cooperative win-win one, and going into new, unfamiliar territory without a map.

     Most systems of critical thinking identify the needed characteristics of humility, honesty, integrity, civility, empathy, justice, perseverance, courage and confidence in applying completeness, accuracy, relevance, logic, fairness, precision, significance, breadth, clarity and depth to answer questions and solve problems.  In thinking critically, it is important to be aware of all the cognitive, emotional, cultural and other built-in biases that can distort the truth of something. And of course, even with critical thinking there is always a leap of faith you have to take regarding the validity of the source you are using, no matter how diligent you are in the process.   

Three Benefits of Critical Thinking:

·         Finding important principles about how life and people work to apply in similar situations in the future.

·         Discovering creative approaches and achieving better problem-solving results.

·         Getting to the best truth of a situation, by removing biases, unverified assumptions, illusions, distortions and irrelevant information.

Three Ways to Increase Critical Thinking:

·         Reading books and articles about this topic for inspiration.

·         Redefining ideas like creativity and intuition, to get more of these things to have in your toolbox.

·         Exploring ethical dilemmas for reasonable compromises that are based on sound moral principles.

2. Emotional Intelligence.

     People with high emotional intelligence are generally happier, enjoy better relationships, and are more successful than those without it. Emotional intelligence includes self-awareness, self-regulation, reading others’ emotions accurately, empathy, intrinsic motivation and social skills. People with high emotional intelligence understand the value of developing a likeable personality by being agreeable, accepting, positive, honest, humorous and good listeners, which all collectively avoid Glasser’s interpersonal irritability and help others meet Maslow’s essential needs.

     Emotional intelligence also helps improve communication, by creating a supportive climate. Being supportive includes the conscious effort to convey the needed qualities of acceptance, freedom, equality, empathy, spontaneity and tentativeness, which we all want. On the other hand, a defensive tone which shuts down communication, is caused by conveying the unwanted qualities of judgment, control, superiority, insensitivity, manipulation and certainty.  

Three Benefits of Emotional Intelligence:

·         Improving communication which increases productivity and satisfaction in personal and work relationships.

·         Resolving conflicts with others by managing unproductive emotions and egos that get in the way.

·         Questioning beliefs that may be based more on feelings rather than rational facts.

Three Ways to Increase Emotional Intelligence:

·         Seeking honest feedback from trusted others about how they perceive you.

·         Sharing vulnerabilities at the right time to reduce the defensiveness of having them.

·         Reading stories or watching movies that exemplify strong motivation or empathy by exceptional individuals.

3. Mindfulness.

     Although mindfulness was originally practiced as a form of meditation by the Buddhist and Hindu traditions, it has been popularized today by the helping professions, as a means to deal with behavioral health problems. It has been estimated that we spend over 70% of our waking time thinking about everything but what we are doing. This seems like a great waste of time, which is the one most valuable resource that is equally distributed, but very unequally used.

     Mindfulness involves decreasing the time we spend thinking about things in the past or what might happen in the future, while increasing the time thinking about the situation we are in at the present moment. The past can only influence us if we let it and we can never know the future, without first knowing the present. By becoming more aware of the most relevant things going on right now, we can become more successful in what we are currently doing, which can ensure a more successful future. 

Three Benefits of Mindfulness:

·         Managing time better by not wasting it with mind-wandering and improving performance now with the time saved.

·         Making better responses to situations by being more aware of what is presently going on.

·         Improving cognitive functioning, having better health, and being less stressed, depressed or anxious.

Three Ways to increase Mindfulness:

·         Catching yourself mind-wandering, measuring the time being wasting and then thinking about how that keeps you from being more successful than paying more attention to what you are currently doing.

·         Practicing some form of meditation to clear rambling thoughts in emptying the mind for important insights to enter.

·         Communing with nature and focusing on what you can learn from your observations that can help improve the quality of your life.

     These three important skills are very interconnected and so using them as an interactive system guarantees more success in closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be in satisfying your essential needs. For example, critical thinking enables gains in emotional intelligence and mindfulness to be used in improving personal and work relationships. And increasing mindfulness and emotional intelligence can improve critical thinking and cognitive performance by removing obstacles and irrelevant influences to finding the truth. Finally, all three skills help replace the external control from genetics, social conditioning and past experiences, with an internal locus of control, which is a very important need we have, in the pursuit of happiness and success.