Have you ever wondered what the thinking skills are that separate normal people from successful people? Here are 10 thinking skills of successful people which make them different.
Positive thinking
Successful people realize that their mentality can affect all aspects of their life, including success. Researchers have found that positive thinking opens people up to developing new skills, which can have a compounding effect among happy people who repeat this process. For example, if you start a habit of running for enjoyment and then do well in a marathon, you’ll take that happiness to fuel learning how to rock climb (and then take that success to move on to something else, and so on). Positive thinking can also have numerous health benefits: People who practice positive thinking have been shown to have increased life spans, lower rates of depression, greater resistance to colds and disease, and better coping skills during stressful periods.
Utilize risk-oriented thinking
Highly successful leaders think big and dream bigger than most. When you learn how to push the envelope and dare to go where no one else has even looked yet, you’ll be admired as a risk taker, someone who dares to gamble–and because you dare more, you’ll have more.
Inference Thinking
Having the ability to understand and recognize what elements you will need in order to determine an accurate conclusion or hypothesis, from the information you have at your disposal.
Picture yourself as a business manager; you are looking at the latest sales forecast and you see sales have decreased. It’s important for you to be able to understand what additional information you may need in order to determine why that happened, including identifying internal issues, external competition or even economic conditions. The ability to understand the information you already have and determine what you may still need to find the best solution, is an important skill for you to have no matter what career field you are in.
Harness focused thinking
Focused thinking shuts out interruptions and interference, allowing you to concentrate with clarity. When you can focus your thinking, you are able to bring clarity to challenges, targets, and results.
Analytical thinking
Analytical intelligence involves the conscious direction of our mental processes to find a thoughtful solution to a problem. It is the ability to overcome obstacles to find a solution. Being analytically intelligent is having the ability to solve problems effectively.
Engage in inquisitive thinking. Successful leaders spend their time questioning everything they know and everything they don’t know. When you question, you gain knowledge, and when you gain knowledge, you have impact. To be impactful, you to have to question what everyone else is taking for granted. And that alone can give you a leg up on innovation and creativity.
Creative thinking
Creative intelligence is the ability to come up with new ideas. With creative intelligence, a person can generate innovative solutions to solve problems.
In simple words, way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox solutions (which may look unsettling at first). Creative thinking can be stimulated both by an unstructured process such as brainstorming, and by a structured process such as lateral thinking.
Reflective thinking
Take the time to reflect before you act, listen before you speak, understand before you respond, and engage your compassion before you react. When you take the time to reflect, it gives perspective. It allows you the bandwidth to see what is truly going on without being emotionally charged. Reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself, so you can see things with a new pair of eyes.
Shared thinking
Collaborative thinkers like to hear what other people are thinking so they can expand their own ideas. As much as we like to think we know it all, the best kind of thinking–the kind that brings the greatest return–is not done solo but is shared.
Strategic thinking
Strategic thinkers can simplify the difficult, prepare for uncertainties, and reduce the margin of errors–all because they have a plan. Strategic thinking makes you a great planner, which is how you move easily from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow.
Explore big-picture thinking
Big-picture thinkers are always ready to see things that other people cannot see; they are able to size up a situation and take all the variables into account. Once you can connect dots like no one else, you’ll always be prepared to seize an opportunity when the time is right.
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