Dr Esha Lovrić

C.S Lewis advice to young writers and thinkers. Use some critical thinking or apply some cognitive effort to apply this to a 2025 world. This process is particularly important to engage in to improve your automatic thinking skills.

This is my 3-year-old daughter and me in Bansko, Bulgaria, in December/Euro winter holidays. She learned to ski quickly and easily. There are a few reasons for this.

Unlike adults, children have a unique ability to focus intensely on tasks that promise social rewards. From the moment she arrived, she observed everyone around her—including her older brother and sister—successfully skiing. She wasn’t going to be the little one left behind!

I watched many parents and instructor’s teaching children to ski, and what stood out to me was the process: focus, determination, commitment, hope, failure, and repetition. The language used was direct, clear, consistent. Emotion was there, but the mentors also with sophistication and focus on the real goal, dealt with these breakdowns swiftly and effectively. It was a profound sight to witness. They were bonding. Trusting. Remaining loyal. They were good. Brave. Courageous.

No one was there for anything else. It was pure critical thinking in action—assessment, analysis, decision. The skills needed to achieve a clear goal: to learn to ski. So much beauty and chaos and order.

Mallorca, Spain a few days ago. We stayed in a quiet town where we could hear the breeze and had time to take moments to smell the “roses”. If you want to learn to hear your thoughts and tame them, take time to be alone. Sit with a book; meet nature face to face; or be still just with your thoughts, a rebellious but malleable company. If you never do any of that, then you know you have to do it. Start now. I spend most of my time hearing words. Now day’s I realise how peaceful it is to spend time alone or with just a very few people I love and enjoy, sharing beautiful words and the subtle feelings of a life that is absolutely enough.

Don’t aim to read as much as you can in a lifetime; aim to read as deeply as you can. Reading itself isn’t the lesson—understanding the value of pondering information is. One challenging book (a book which challenges your thinking) can be transformational. And it’s not just about the words in the book, it’s how you read them.

Excerpts from my FREE long form critical thinking Newsletter Sunday Synapse.

Visit the link in bio to signup.

You will also get my free e-book Foundations of Thought which gives you eight foundational thinking laws imperative for critical thinking, emotional intelligence and healthy thinking.

If you do not have a good foundation, it’s difficult to build anything stable on it.

See you in your inbox Sunday!

Here’s me and a couple of friends hiking Mt Učka in Croatia yesterday.

As some of you may know we (husband & young kids) moved to a small seaside town in Croatia after living in a big city in Australia for 27 years.

Why?

Nature. Community. Family. Simplicity. Focus.

The moment we arrived everything changed. Environment is directly connected to good and bad habits. I will never again underestimate the power of this. As a social scientist my job is to look at how to socially construct environments for our benefit. While this might be complex, carefully selecting what elements you can control in your environment is one way to improve things.

There are bears, wolves, and vultures on Učka 👀

Was I worried? Of course I bloody was! But I still do these things. Luckily it was fine. When you’re in a group often animals stay safely away.

I can’t help but think about the necessity of facing our fears as much as we can both big and small. I have only ever gained from tough thoughts.

Keep up the good thinking habits people! And do it in nature as regularly as you can.

It’s wild but also very believable that such a simple and freely available option can provide such value for the mind and the body. Its flow on effects are unmatched.

I am a better person after a day in the nature.

Five days in Antwerp, Belgium attending a conference to present my most recent research paper. The research was with spinal cord injury patients and aims to improve rehabilitation outcomes.

Findings from this research also give us broader theoretical and philosophical insights about human beings.

After significant life altering periods in life, people transition from one identity to the next.

During this movement from one place to the next, we enter a symbolically ‘liminal’ space.
Liminality is represented as an in-between place of uncertainty, ambiguity and the unknown. These transitional stages are faced by all of us during major life events such as motherhood, fatherhood, child to teenager, teenager to adulthood, puberty, marriage, sickness, disability etc.

Inside, we are transitioning as well as separating from a previous identity. During this transition we face identity risk where we can become resentful and turn against ourselves.

Explore the philosophy of liminality. It’s an anthropological theory by Arnold van Gennep who studied tribal behaviour to gain deeper understanding about sociological human behaviours. It relates to all of us.

1. Conference Day 1
2. Study Details & Presentation Poster
3. Lonesome Delegate Selfie
4. Sound & feeling
5. Belgium architecture
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9. Restaurant Eighteen
10. “Rebecca”, who is by my side always gifted to me by my children.

This is what we see all day long on social media because it is easy to behave that way when you have no face.

In any setting where we need to work with people and different personalities, in day-to-day interactions, the charitable approach can help navigate misunderstandings and disagreements very effectively.

Read this week’s FREE Newsletter for more on this important skill for critical thinking where we learn to be charitable when we listen and speak with people! Link in bio.

As soon as we feel uncomfortable with an idea, opinion or behavior, we instinctively move away from it and use flight to shut of the negative feelings associated with it. Do not waste the opportunity for deep reflection. Your cognitive synapses fire up when something is hard to think about. Use it to your intellectual advantage.
For more FREE info on becoming a better communicator and thinker: read this week's Newsletter (link in bio)!!

We can easily view others as irrational, stupid, or annoying. That is normal and will continue to happen and it allows you to remove those you do not want in your circles. At the same time, to get a deeper understanding of human beings, you must strive to assess people fairly and with charity. This is sophisticated thinking about the world. Some questions to ask:
Why did they say that?
What matters to them to think this way?

The best leaders, managers, parents, and people have these skills. Start learning them now. Link in bio for more info on this topic!

We will always choose the easiest thoughts. Hard thoughts are hard!
Most of us need to be able to attend to our minds as we are on our own most of the time.

Think about hard things and provide solutions enough times over and over, and there is only one endpoint—you simply become smarter, more alert, more articulate, and mentally healthier.

This is why therapy can work so well as a good therapist helps people think about hard things and face them with bravery.

You can solve problems better than ever before and you simply move through life with cognitive confidence. This should be the aim.