Website owner: James Miller
There are two kinds of mind: PRACTICAL MIND. Information oriented, fact oriented, realistic, objective, logical, practical, prosaic, rational, reasonable, sensible, straight-thinking. Mental processes: thinking, reflecting, considering, pondering, exploring, observing, learning, inquiring, investigating, studying, weighing, debating, analyzing, figuring, calculating. IMPRACTICAL MIND. Fantasy oriented, daydreaming oriented, imagination oriented, impression oriented, feeling oriented, image or scene oriented, visionary, impractical, airy, vapory, etherial, idealistic, unrealistic, irrational, daydreamy, romantic, dewy-eyed, in the clouds. Mental processes: daydreaming, fantasizing, wishful thinking, imagining. The two types of mind represent two distinct ways the mind can work. The practical mind works with facts and processes facts. It thinks using known facts that it has learned through observation, experience, reading, etc.. The impractical mind is a dreamy mind. It works with images and processes images. The dreamer fantasizes romantic or idealized scenes of himself and others doing things. His mind doesn't work the same way as a practical-minded person. He has a thousand romantic, idealized images and notions in his head and they affect his logic. He confuses these images or notions with reality. Like Don Quixote he confuses the ideas or images from a romantic book or movie with reality. They put him out of touch with reality. He thinks reality is what he saw in a movie or a book he read. He comes to expect from life what life can't or won't give. The impractical mind is feeling oriented. It deals in feelings, vague notions. It is attuned to things like atmosphere, feel, aura, impression, taste, mood, color, ambience, flavor, etc. It loves feeling oriented things such as music and art. It loves beauty, dwells on it, gets lost in it. It is imaginative, idealistic, romantic, oriented toward what gives pleasure. The practical mind lacks in feeling. It is cold, objective, rational, impartial. Young children often have impractical minds. They often tend towards a world of imagination, pretense, and fantasy. They dream and get lost in an imaginary world of their own making. Adults, on the other hand, especially adults who carry the responsibility of running a household, usually have a practical mind. The responsible adult has other people depending on him. He must deal with life and facts, for the sake of his loved ones as well as his. You can't deal with life by dreams and wishful thinking. A practical mind is part of responsible character and emotional maturity. There are indeed impractical-minded adults --- dreamers. And they usually pay well for their impracticality unless they have some practical person to take care of them. Good mental health requires a practical mind. A practical mind is necessary to navigating life and the world. An impractical person is likely to be one who is fleeing reality, an escapist. Fleeing reality doesn't work. It is equivalent to fleeing fact, fleeing truth. It is vitally important to have the courage to face fact, truth and reality in this life. Only then can you deal with it. Dealing with life requires knowledge, understanding, plus good use of the full reasoning powers of the mind. The pursuit of understanding and truth is important to good mental health and a practical mind is critical to the pursuit of understanding and truth. The mind of the dreamer leads into mental problems. Whether a person is a practical minded person or an impractical minded one is a person's choice. It is all a matter of attitude. It is the attitude you take towards reality. You either face it and deal with it or run from it. Face it or put your head in the sand like an ostrich. And you have power over your attitude. But both ways of thinking, practical and dreaming, are habits. They are mental habits. Habits can be very hard to change and people may not realize that they do have the power to change. They may not think they can change. And, as with many strongly ingrained habits, many people never escape from them and never change. People go through life a slave and victim of a habit which derives from a wrong attitude which they could change --- but they don't understand the situation well enough to know that. An impractical minded dreamer can change and become a realistic practical-minded person. But the change must come from within himself. First he must see his error. It may come suddenly to him like a stroke from the blue. He may suddenly realize the critical importance of being a realist in life, facing reality and dealing with it. Then his attitude can flip from dreamer to realist in the space of a split second. He can then start pursuing reality with enthusiasm. He is now a practical-minded realist. It is all a matter of attitude. But first he must appreciate the importance of doing it. And, as with other problems deriving from wrong attitudes, others telling him about his error probably won't make him see it. The light must come from within himself. Feb 2002 More from SolitaryRoad.com:
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