Think About It: Adventures In Our Awareness

By Mara Pennell

Do you ever stop and consider life? Your life? What is important to you? What are your principles and how do they align with your life? We are bombarded by endless newscasters telling us what we should think. Has anyone ever given you an opportunity to think on your own? Identifying your considered opinion, not just parroting off what someone told you to think about something, is endlessly valuable. How you think changes over time. I don't want to tell you what to think, I want you to learn how to think. My intention is to give you things to consider so that you may come to your own conclusions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350916683

Book preview

Foreword

Foreword:

The Pause

If your life is anything like mine, it feels like go, go, go all day long! Sound familiar? The responsibilities of work and home sometimes feel like there is never enough time to, pause, stop and consider - well anything.

We have twenty-four hour news that can blast us all day long. Often telling us not only what happened, but what we are supposed to think about what happened. This is a problem, because we no longer pause and consider all the angles. We are moving so fast, we find ourselves nodding yes, never really considering the subject ourselves, Never thinking it through.

There are questions we need to ask ourself and they are are the W and H questions of who, what, why, when, where and how?

• Who is involved?

• What actually happened?

• When did it occur?

• Where did it take place?

• Why is this important?

• How does it impact my life?

I use these questions to determine how much attention I am going to pay to what I hear on the news, along with one more: Can I do anything about it?

We all need to get back to thinking for ourselves. For some it will be for the first time. The stories I share are real life occurrences — the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. I hope as you read them you will pause and consider them. What do they mean to you? Do you agree with my assessment and take away? I ask that you…

Think About It.

Introduction

Introduction:

Adventures Through Our Awareness

When I was seven years old my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be a writer. He then asked what I wanted to write. I told him I didn’t know. I come from a family of writers — all different kinds. My dad authored several textbooks still in use today. Several of his cousins on both sides of his family are or were writers. One of my cousins wrote with Carl Sagan, another - Louise Scott Wrigley - was a famous poet in her genre,. My cousin Dirk Tousley has written several books for chiropractic and acupuncture doctors, as well as, for himself, a brilliant novel, Dangling In The Adios. So, being a writer seemed like the thing to aspire to.

However, I did not publish my first book until last autumn, but I realize I have been writing nearly all my life. I have written curriculum for years. I was a co-author of a youth curriculum for an international retreat for eight years running.. they were all teenagers and a tough crowd to please. I have written pieces for my chiropractic office when I was in practice and had a case study published in the nineties. As you may know I have been writing Sunday talks for thirty years. I started even before I was a minister. I have spoken before large crowds and authored all the speeches involved. Even though I did not recognize it, I have always been a writer. Who knew?

Additionally, I have written four books. To date the only ones published are Finding Your Unpredictable Good and this one Think About It: Adventures Through Our Awareness. The other two are in rewrite because they never felt finished. But I now have a plan. Please look for them in the future.

Yes I am a writer. Part of what I was missing at the age of seven was the experience of life that I now can share. Perhaps my intuition was informing me of what the future could hold. My own Unpredictable Good. I did write at seven, but it was from my limited childhood experience that I could share and I did not have much to share. My writing has improved by leaps and bounds over the years

What I recognize from my years of teaching, ministry and listening to my clients is that we all have talents we are not aware of. We have abilities we use everyday and yet we do not see them. They are not in our awareness. I hope to help you become aware. One piece of this puzzle is the use of critical thinking. Thinking things through, noticing what you are doing and what is going on around you. I have no interest in telling you what to think. I just want you to learn to actually think, not just run ideas around in your head that someone else has planted. We all have volition and I want everyone to know how to use it.

You have talents you use everyday and you have talents you have never unlocked. If nothing else got in your way, what would you be doing today? If there were no should, no ought to’s, no education to be gained or wasted, what would you be doing? What is your dream? I ask because I am finally living mine, but I had to come to it. I had to clear my consciousness to reach this place. I am finally doing what I