Most of us have a great capacity for learning and thinking, but we don't actually use it to the best of our ability. Developing our critical thinking skills requires a gradual process of hard work over a long period of time (Paul & Elder). There are many factors that influence the way we think, such as habits, influences and knowledge. Bad habits such as stereotypes, resistance to change and the influences of others can affect how we think critically. But we need to overcome these bad habits and change how we think, how we process information, and how we take that information and develop solutions to problems and issues. Many of us probably don't realize how much we use critical thinking in our daily lives. I know before. An example of this is when my husband and I purchased a used car about five years ago. At the time we were borrowing a vehicle from a family member because my husband had wrecked our car and totaled it. This was in the middle of summer and the truck we had borrowed from my father-in-law had no air conditioning. The truck also had a manual transmission which, although I can drive, I prefer not to if I don't have to. At the time we didn't have a lot of money to invest in a vehicle, so we decided the best thing to do would be to buy a used vehicle. Most dealers wanted more for their used cars than what we were looking to pay, so a friend suggested we check Craig's List, and so we did. There weren't many good options out there, but we finally came across a reasonably priced Ford Explorer. My husband contacted the seller and set up a day to go look at the car which was located in Durham, about an hour and a half away. When we arrived to see the Explorer I was hot and sick from the heat. I don't know much about cars, so when my husband asked me what I thought, I told him it was entirely up to him because he knew more about cars than I did. We decided to go ahead and purchase the vehicle without taking it for a mechanic's check-up and take it home the same day. Not long after that we started having problems and once they started the problems just kept coming. According to Jonathan Chan in his Tutorial C01: What is critical thinking and why is it important?, “a critical thinker is able to infer consequences from what he knows, and knows how to use information to solve problems and search for relevant sources of information to get informed” (Chan). We made a rash decision based on our irritation at the situation without thinking through it rationally