PHI 103: Applying Critical Thinking to Your Life

PHI 103: Applying Critical Thinking to Your Life

One focus of this final week of the course is to think about how critical thinking can improve our lives. To that end, this discussion post allows you to get started by working on some specific thing that you can do to apply critical thinking in your life.

Prepare: Begin by choosing something that you can do that will take about thirty minutes that represents an application of critical thinking to your life. Examples include:

  • Write a personal mission statement, including a list of your long-term priorities, how can achieve them.
  • Create a budget or financial plan (for a week, month, year, or life)
  • Read something about how to improve in a specific area of your life (e.g. a specific relationship, parenting, health, finances, education, etc.)
  • Make a health plan with the goal of maximal long-term health and well-being.
  • Look up, research, enroll in, or participate in a specific activity that you feel could improve your life (e.g. a yoga/exercise, an educational course, a service opportunity, therapy, spa appointment, a local gardening class, etc.).
  • Design a strategy for making more effective decisions in a specific area of your life.
  • Be creative: Come up with a fun idea that could be actually implemented to make your life better. Make a plan to achieve it!

Write: Share with the class what you did (you do not have to share the specifics, only tell us what you worked on) and whether or not you found it beneficial.

Write another paragraph in which you address some of the following types of questions:

Did you enjoy the exercise? Do you believe that you will actually implement some of the things you wrote in your life? In what ways do you think that doing so might be beneficial? Would there be risks involved in implementing your plan? In what ways can this type of exercise improve your life? In what ways do you think that applied critical thinking can make people’s lives better?

 

Guided Response: Post a minimum of three responses, two of which must be to your classmates. The third response could be to a classmate or your instructor.  Be sure to post on three separate days throughout the week to promote further engagement and discussion. Each response should be a minimum 75 of words.

Option #4: The Positive Purposes of Ar