Thinking Is The Greatest Investment

It is an indisputable fact that the only vehicle that can lead us to achieve our dreams, goals and aspirations in life is INVESTMENT. Indeed, many a youth have come to understand that investment has a vitally inevitable role in achieving success. In my view, the understanding of the term and its application is skewed because the most fundamental element that one cannot do without is reasonable thinking.

My interactions with many friends who are still struggling to adjust their lives in their bits to securing a comfortable future largely attribute to lack of capital, to start anything on their own. Unfortunately, I have never heard any of them say, they lack strategic ideas. It is also a fact that the capitals such people think about getting by magic or divine grace are some humongous quantum of physical cash. I share a different thought with this piece.

In my ordinary view, thinking is the core of investment and for that matter, the greatest investment capital that is invincible but centrally paramount. One’s ability to generate ideas, set achievable goals and aims largely determines what he is able to achieve in life. I know that reasonable thinking alone cannot do the magic but it has the propensity to open doors for other peripheral elements necessary in making progress and prosperity. For me, it is absolutely unproductive to work towards physical cash as capital before generating strategic ideas for investment into any sector. Many people fail in their insatiable quest to invest without strategic ideas. For me, money without ideas resulting from critical thinking is profound poverty. Count yourself a potential successful person with strategic ideas. I am not oblivious of the fact that ideas without effective implementation only precipitate failure of dreams but with ideas, one is far ahead of reaching success.

The world is ruled by strategic ideas. These strategic ideas are the reason behind the proliferation of innovations and inventions globally. The most critical thinker in this idealistic global world is the one who makes use of his cognitive abilities. The problems people run away from are those critical thinkers take advantage of, to cause a change in society. In the most advanced economies dominated by the private sector, your ability to acquire wealth or occupy a niche in the enterprise of industrialization is largely dependent on your ability to keep on generating ideas through critical thinking. Such a thinking is largely positive thinking, resilient thinking, critical thinking, innovative thinking or call it visionary thinking. Ironically in the part of our world of developing economies like Ghana, people run away from problems and blame government or others without any conscious effort of making a bold step to solving those problems through critical thinking.

We sit aloof and clamor for change of governments, government support, sponsorship, good education, mechanized agriculture, improved education among others as if those are the fundamental panaceas to our sea of challenges. What are we also doing individually? A society that lacks foresight, is a society dominated by lazy thinking populace.

This is evident in the fact that most African countries with rich natural resources still lack the needed technical know-how to adequately tap them to create progressive and prosperous economies for ourselves. We don’t need any rocket scientists to tell us our problems. Not even prophesies of our so called men of God, can perform any magic in our lives if we don’t develop a positive attitude through critical thinking. It is through critical thinking that can feed this nation with enterprising ideas towards creating the much talked about industrialized nation we so much desire. No politician can do it by mere politics and policies.

Also, we must not only think positively but original in our thinking. There is no critical thinking when you lazily copy the thinking of others without a deeper appreciation and understanding of the hidden spirit, wisdom, behind it. That is another disease among us, Africans. Almost all our policies were blindly copied. We are a unique people with different abilities capable of solving our own problems but we have thrown those abilities away for an unconscious mental slavery which is now our major development challenge people refuse to talk about. The worst offenders are some politicians who continually indoctrinate the minds of the younger generations. Most of the youth are interested in what to eat today and not what to have tomorrow. At a point, I was perplexed when very educated men of society who are politicians told the Ghanaian youth that people do not eat infrastructure and that employment is solely created by government. Since am not writing a political article, I would not dwell much on it but I succinctly think that such backward thinking must be avoided in the mind of any individual or group that aspire for greater heights in life.

We live in a society with so many professors in diverse fields yet they are unable to proffer any alternative to any emerging contemporary impediments. They are perhaps only competent in the use of jargon and largely end up in politics with fixed ideas whiles the real solutions lie in front of us. It is really fascinating. I urge my fellow youth to take a different paths and consider critical thinking, the greatest investment.

Put together your aims and goals and always remain focus and committed through critical thinking. Learn to adjust yourself in the very "chameleonic" environment we find ourselves. We can sign our own financial and economic freedom when we believe in ourselves than entrenching our destinies into the hands of others.

Denis Andaban.
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