Managing the Brain Improves Our Ability to Think Properly About Things and Get Better Performance and Results in Solving Problems and Goal Achievement

In many cases where we land into problems or fail to solve problems or to achieve our goals, not thinking properly about it is one of the major common reasons. I will show this with a personal example here.

Managing the brain is important because the brain is the primary organ that does most of the thinking and deals with emotions; from generating them, managing them, using them and also terminating them. The brain makes decisions and processes information. It is the leading machine also responsible for organising and storing data and information as well as memories and experiences and using them. The brain can, and does, operating in automatic mode most of the time in many areas and situations and makes many decisions without our conscious guidance or approval. Some of these decisions are good but many are flawed or even harmful or dangerous. The rapid automatic thinking pathways deserve special attention. The better we manage our brain and its operations, the better results we get and the better we are able to experience life.

Thinking management is part of managing the brain and helping it to think better, more effectively and more powerful.

The Importance of Thinking Properly

I did my Master of Science Degree at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and got a job as a Waste Management Officer at Lancaster City Council. I worked for twelve months there. Then I thought since my country, Zimbabwe, was facing serious environmental challenges including solid waste management challenges, I would make a better contribution there since in my Master of Science Degree I had studied the subjects that address most of the present day challenges the world is facing including;

1. Solid waste management,
2. Climate change,
3. Renewable energies,
4. Contaminated land remediation
5. Air and water pollution controls
6. Environmental toxicology
7. Project management
8. Toxic chemicals, their transport, impacts and fate in the environment

So I returned to Zimbabwe HOPING that I would easily find a job in the environment sector or at least quickly launch into a successful consultant in environmental pollution and solid waste management. My "reasoning" was

"Zimbabwe is facing serious pollution and solid waste management challenges and I have the knowledge and skills for solving the problems and therefore I will easily earn a living solving the problems."

This sounds logically correct right? Logical reasoning is not, by itself, thinking properly.

When I returned to Zimbabwe, I discovered the hard and painful way that the presence of a problem and its solution does not mean that the problem will be solved. I realised that generally, there was no interest in solving the problems I had anticipated would be my source of income. I struggled for months trying to sell my solution and expertise to the relevant organisations but there was no traction. This does not mean that these institutions had better solutions of were seriously addressing the problems; they were not and still had no interest in the solutions.

Eventually I develop a fall back plan and went into strategy consulting as well as training, education and development mainly in the corporate sector. I also diversified into business strategy and organisational performance.

I am telling you this story as an example of the importance of thinking properly. In this case I did not thinking properly about my returning to Zimbabwe and I landed into trouble. My decisions, looking back, were not backed on the total situation and also on reality but on other factors probably including emotional connections with home. If I had thought properly about it, I should have looked for a job in Zimbabwe from the Uk without physically coming back. That way I could have produced better results.

I did not manage my brain and its thinking processes as properly as I should have done. I did not think properly about the situation. Our brain is not very good at thinking properly most of the time. It is prone to making poor, bad or wrong decisions unless we carefully manage it and help it to make the right decision. In fact, we must make sure we are involved and we put the brain under our control whenever we want to make serious decisions. We must know when to take strong control of the brain and when to allow the brain to produce decisions and answers for us on its own. If we fail, we will have many suprising decisions and most of them regrettable.

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?Simon Bere, 2023