Formatory Thinking is mechanical stimulus response thinking. It is crowd thinking and is responsible for turning an assembly into a mob, creating wars, religious dogma. It is obedience to authority thinking, like the Stanley Milgram’s book and experiments in the 1950’s. It is where you assign your responsibility to thinking for yourself to someone else or some entity other than yourself. Formatory Thinking is how the masses are controlled, it is the essence of advertising; “Join the crowd and get away from it all.” It is the: shoulds, shouldn’ts, compliant thinking; either/or absolute extreme thinking, black or white, no shades-of-gray thinking, taking ideas on face value because a so-called expert told you it was so, peer-pressure thinking, rebellious thinking just for the sake of rebelling and knee-jerk reactions.
There are what are called formatory expressions:"It's all good, Nip it in the Bud, A Piece of Cake, All Greek To Me, Barking Up The Wrong Tree, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Close But No Cigar, Never look a gift horse in the mouth"
The list goes on and on. The thing is that if you want to think differently and in a more intelligent way, it is important to try and avoid these kinds of expressions.
I often use the term "Thinking out of the box." But, it is intentional for the purpose of getting peoples attention. But, I don't make a habit of these expressions.
The worst kinds of formatory expressions represent black or white thinking like "Love it or leave it, you're either with me or against me." These expressions may sound good or tough or clever, but in the end represent a narrow mind.
Think about what you are saying. Find a different way of saying it. Explain what you are actually trying to say and you might see contradictions or need clarification of what your thinking is about.
Why should you do all of this?
Because we are living in a dream reality as in the movie called "The Matrix." If you feel comfortable living in this kind of waking sleep, fine. But if you choose to wake up and see life with more clarity, it is important to do anything you can to wake up from this dream.
Mindmavericks.org's workshops are designed to give you the tools to make significant breakthroughs to see life with vivid clarity, beyond the current limits of your imagination.
