Unlock Your Mind: The Art of Thinking

What were you thinking? Or better yet, what were you not thinking? Have you ever tried to teach someone how to think? Do you know what it takes to learn how to think yourself? Well, on this podcast, we're going to learn all about how to think. Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rohm, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rohm.

Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Rohm, and on this week's podcast, I'm going to share with you one of the most important concepts I've ever learned in my whole life. And basically, it's how to think. Now, thinking is an important skill set that everyone should have. But how is it developed? I mean, do you go down to Home Depot and buy a can of thinking and spray it all over your face or in your ears in order to learn how to think? Well, I'm being a little humorous, but, you know, I don't think that's a good idea. Well, what about this idea of thinking? Is it something that you're born knowing how to do? Imagine all of the problems you and I have ever had in our lives because we weren't thinking correctly about something. And just because you're thinking does not even mean that you're thinking correctly. Learning to think is a skill that will take you far in life, and we need to talk about how it's developed. Now, I was a school teacher for several years and a school administrator. I wish I had known then what I know now about teaching people how to think. It is a skill that can be learned, and there is a specific way. And I'm going to teach it to you on this pro on this podcast. So. So you'll know exactly how to learn how to think. All right, so let's get started. In the English language, there are four kinds of sentences. The first sentence is called a declarative sentence. That's just what we would call a regular sentence. If I said today is Tuesday, that's just a declarative sentence. I'm making a declaration. It's sunny outside today. Again, just an example of a declarative sentence. They usually end with a period. It's just a statement that we make. Then there's the second kind. The second kind of sentence in the English language is called imperative. Imperative is an action oriented kind of technique. It's a. It's a command. Shut the door, turn off the light, be at work on time. All of those are imperative sentences. Because they are are giving some kind of command. The third kind of sentence in the English language is called an exclamatory sentence. Those are sentences that usually end in an exclamation point. Like I won the lottery, or today is my birthday and I'm so excited, or I got my driver's license today. Any sentence that's excited or full of excitement or has some kind of exclamatory manner to it is called an explanatory sentence. And again, it ends in an exclamation point. All those are great sentences, but you know what? None of them teach you how to think. A sentence that ends in a period or an exclamation point is just a statement. It may be a simple statement, a statement with emphasis, or a statement of exclamatory information.

But that leads to the fourth kind of sentence in English, and it's called an interrogative sentence. An interrogative sentence ends in a question mark. A question mark might be, what time is it? How long will it take to get there? Do you have a reservation number? Do you have a confirmation number? Any sentence that ends in a question mark. Listen carefully. Causes you to have to think. If I say to you, I think it's five o', clock, well, I might be right or I might be wrong. But if I say to you, say, excuse me, could you tell me what time it is? Immediately a sentence with a question mark causes a person to have to ask themselves a question. Well, what time is it? Let me look at my watch. Is my watch correct? All of us have had situations where we needed information, and information is primarily the key to learning how to think correctly. Now, let me use a couple of examples and I'll show you how important this comes, especially in family relationship. I have four grown daughters. My second daughter, Esther, when she was about 16 or 17, like all teenagers, she was, you know, running around with her friends and they go to a movie or bowling or something. And I told her, you have to be home at 11 o'. Clock. Now listen carefully. How does that sentence end? That sentence ends in a period. You have to be home at 11 o'. Clock. That's what you would call a declarative sentence. Or maybe I want you home by 11 o'. Clock. That's an imperative sentence. Or, you better be home by 11. That's an exclamation or an exclamatory sentence with an exclamation point at the end. Well, guess what? None of that worked. So particularly after a few times and us having to go back and forth about being late and me learning again, the process. I said, you're late, see, late. You're late. That is in a period or an exclamation point, point. And I. And she would say, well, I'm sorry. And then I said, you're always late. And she would say, I'm always late. I'm never on time. I've never been home on time in the history of my life. Now she's asking me questions. And now I had to think. Well, she. She has been on time in the past. Real quickly I saw this thing is falling apart fast. So I slowly but surely learned how to think. And the way I learned how to think was realizing if you ask someone a question, they have to think. So I said one night she came home about 11:15. And I said, hey, sweetheart, what time is it now? She said, 11:15. I said, what time did we agree that you would be home? She said, 11. And I said, is 11:15 before 11 or is 11:15 after 11? She said, well, 11:15 is after 11. And I said, well, did you keep your promise to be home by 11 o'? Clock? No. Well, what kind of discipline or what kind of situation should occur for you not keeping your word? Are you listening to me? Every sentence is a question. Every sentence is a thought through comment that was turned from either declarative sentence, an imperative sentence, or exclamatory sentence into an interrogative sentence. So I said, well, what kind of discipline or what kind of punishment should you face for not keeping your word and for being late? And I was thinking, you know, should. She's going to say something like, I have to be home at 10:30 tomorrow night or the next time I go out. And so I was thinking, you know, it'd be reasonable. She said, well, I guess I'm grounded for a week. Good grief. I wasn't thinking of that kind of discipline. But sometimes, listen to me. When you ask someone a question, they may take a situation and show you the way they're thinking about it, which may be far different than the way you're thinking about it. Now, let's take this to another level. How do you teach yourself to think? You teach yourself to think by asking yourself questions.

In asking yourself questions, you are going to learn how to specifically move from general information to specific information. Let me show you how this works for me. I live about 36 miles from the Atlanta airport, live in a small town called Griffin. My wife and I have a farm In Griffin, about 36 miles from the Atlanta airport. Now, if I say to Myself, well, I'm going to the airport. Well, that lists sentence ends in a period. Or if I say, well, I better get going, I've got to get to the airport, that might be an imperative sentence or even exclamatory sentence, but here's what I've learned to say. Now watch carefully how I'm talking to me now. How far is it to the airport? It's about 36 miles. Is there going to be any traffic? Oh, yeah, it's going to be a lot of traffic. When you get to the airport, are you going to be able to control the parking lot? No, no. Speaking of the parking lot, did you make a reservation? Because if you're going to park in the parking lot, they only accept reservations. Now, did you make a reservation? How much time is it going to take you to check in and check a bag? Well, I don't know because I don't know how many people are going to be in line. How long is it going to take you to get through security? Well, I don't know that either because security lines could be real long or real short. And when you go through security, do you have a knife in your pocket, little pocket knife that you normally carry with you because they're going to take it away from you. Did you leave that in your car? I hope you're listening to this. This is how I learned how to think. And how long do you think you should allow yourself to be at the airport? Well, gosh, I'm going to allow at least three to four hours of leaving my house to drive 36 miles to park the car to check the bag, to go through security and not have them take anything away from me. Then to get to my gate. And if I get to my gate one or two hours early, guess what? I have a phone. I have a laptop. I can go to the Sky Room and get something to eat. If I'm early, there's no damage. But if I'm late now, I'm in a hurry. Now I'm short with people. Now I'm running. I have seen people fall over in the Atlanta airport and go into cardiac arrest because they were under so much stress. I know I'm not going to live forever, but I'm not going to die in the airport because I didn't allow myself enough time. Here's the point I want you to get. You will never learn how to think for yourself until you learn how to ask yourself questions. The more you ask yourself questions and get good answers, the better off you're going to Be now when you're talking to other people and you're coaching someone, or you're right, maybe you're raising children, maybe you're going to school and you're asking yourself something specific about a class. I'll give you the best example. When I was in high school, they gave us a term paper to do. Here's what the term paper assignment usually sounded like. All right, students, you got a term paper. You can pick out a topic. Then the first thing you'll do is you'll start gathering note cards. And then after your note cards, you'll write a bibliography. And then after the bibliography, you will write a rough draft. And then after the rough draft, you will write your final paper. And they gave us that to do. And maybe I've shared this with you before, but the term paper process did not teach me anything about planning. It taught me how to be a criminal. And what I mean by that was, I was looking for note cards. I put all this off through the night before it was due. I was writing my note cards. I was having to use different color pens to make it look like I did it at different times. I wrote a bibliography, crumpled up the paper, spilled a little coffee on it to make it look old. Wrote the rough draft, scratched through things, then wrote the final paper. I was up all night. That's because I didn't know how to do a term paper. Now, if I had been a teacher, and I have been a schoolteacher, but if I had been a teacher back in my day, I would have said, students, the term papers due in six weeks. The note cards are going to be due the first week. When are the note cards due? Now I got to think, okay, they're due at the end of the first week. Then at the end of the second week, you have to turn in your bibliography. When is your bibliography due? Second week. Okay. Then after four weeks, you've got to turn in your rough draft. When is your rough draft due? I have done this as a school teacher, written out contracts and, and had students sign them so they would know. But I always would ask a question like, when is your final paper due? Final papers due in six weeks. And then initial that. I understand that. I'm telling you, I use this when I'm coaching people in business. I ask business owners question like, what is the end result that you're trying to accomplish? Here's the great one. Here's one of the best questions you'll ever ask yourself. You in business or working with another person, what are your expectations? I Think that through. What are your expectations at the end of this project? What are you expecting to have happened at the end of this project? What am I expecting to have happen? Let's share with each other our expectations, because if you share your expectations with each other, you will clearly be able to be singing off the same page. Both of you will be thinking the same way because you've asked yourself some questions. I coach a lot of business owners, and they get so upset when something doesn't go the way it's supposed to go. I asked them. Did you ask your coworker or did you ask your employee what they were expecting? Did you ask them what the end of this situation might look like? Did you ask them what they thought the outcome would be? Did you ask them any questions at all? I'm telling you, the only way you will ever get anyone to think is by asking questions. Now, I know I've gone over this quite a bit in this brief time together, and that's what this podcast is all about. Learning how to think. I want to encourage you to remember two things. If you want to learn how to think yourself, start asking yourself questions. And the more questions you ask about a situation, the more you'll learn to think through things. You'll learn to see the end from the beginning. What is this supposed to look like at the end? And then you can back yourself up by asking more and more questions to get to where you want to go. And the second, when dealing with a friend who a coworker, a spouse, a child. If you want things to turn out well, ask them questions and just say, I just want to make sure we don't get this mixed up. So what are your expectations? What do you think this will look like at the end? How are we going about that together? And then when they finish, say, could I share what I think? And you go back and forth until you get it nailed down. I hope this is a great encouragement to you thinking can be developed. I have five college degrees. I've been around the world several times. I've got a World Series ring from working with Arizona Diamondbacks. I've been blessed a lot more than I should have, and I get asked a lot. How do you teach people how to think? How do you teach children how to think? How do you teach employees how to think? There's only one way. Ask questions. The more you focus on this and the better you get at it, I promise you, the better thinker you're going to become. I'm Dr. Robert Rohm. I hope this podcast has been helpful. Remember, learn how to think by asking questions. I look forward to sharing some more with you on another podcast real soon. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Bye Bye. For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.