Why Introspection Is Crucial For All?

How often you sit back, relax and reflect on your life? Well, you may argue where is the time to do so, but I feel it to be nothing more than an excuse to fool yourself. If you can’t spare few valuable min for self-reflection you are either too busy accumulating or don’t have the guts to face the real you. Whatever you are doing to make your life happen, you need to understand that you need to revisit and reflect upon your life very often and question your life approach at every stage.

Self Introspection: What & Why ?

It is extremely important that we take a moment out of our regular life to clarify our values in a moment of chaos or uncertainty.

Self-reflection & introspection is a mechanism to scrutinize your internal feelings by going inward, which helps you to rebuild your lost relation with your own self. It helps you to seek a solution to your problems which largely is your own making.

Self-assessment is an exercise which gives you the real picture of how you are conducting your life, it is a question mark on your life itself, until you ask some hard questions you may seldom find the right approach, to grow in your life.

So Let’s understand:

What is Introspection/Self-Reflection?

As per Wiki :

Introspection is the examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of one’s mental state, while in a spiritual context, it may refer to the examination of one’s soul. Introspection is closely related to human self-reflection and is contrasted with external observation.

The original idea of introspection was developed by Wilhelm Wundt in the late 1800s (McLeod, 2008). Wundt focused on three areas of mental functioning: thoughts, images, and feelings. Wundt’s work eventually led to the current work on perceptual processes and the establishment of the field of cognitive psychology.

Why Introspection Is So Important For Everyone ?

As per the research (done by wood in 2013) it is found that we have more than 50,000 thought floating in our monkey mind on every given day. Out of this more than 90% thought is repetitive & are attributed to be consuming our mind-space with crappy stuffs. 50 % of our thought content comes out to be negative in nature, Which has no real base as such, but are consuming our mind energies in wrong direction thereby hampering our ability to think with clarity & conviction.

So if you truly want to grow with time you need to get rid of this unwanted thoughts which you have borrowed externally. It is only possible if you take some time out for self-reflection and question your day to day living methodology.

As per Wood, 2013 :Enhancing our ability to understand ourselves and our motivations and learn more about our own values helps us take the power away from the distractions of our modern, fast-paced life, and bring our focus back where it belongs

So if you want to increase your productivity level and enhance your life perceptions you need to focus on your life energies which is right within you. When you get into a spiritually inspired, explorative mode of life, you give yourself a chance to push a refresh button and purify your thought process. To weed out negative thoughts, you need to sit quietly with yourself, talk to yourself in a moment of solace, self -engage yourself in an activity which is purely directed to your own-self.

See That You Are Doing It With Right Balance:

Having said that it is also recommended that you don’t get obsessed with self-reflection and start to over stretch this self-inquiry as you need to do some real world implementation to test out the impact of it. It is crucial that you do this inquiry with a right approach & methodology. Have a congenial environment around you when you sit with yourself or go into a meditative state.

When you have reached the point of obsessiveness instead of dedication, you have taken it too far. In fact, those who take self-reflection too far can end up feeling more stressed, depressed, and anxious than ever-Eurich, 2017.

So it becomes very important that you balance your introspective state and do not over do it to a level where you go into a self-denial mode and start punishing yourself for no reasons. As humans, we are on this earth to explore and engage in the real world more often, fail and learn from our endeavor and grow out of all challenges which is is not in your control fully.

I Feel :Self introspection is just a mechanism to stop for a moment and assess your life situation, where you zoom out the problems if any and put a scanner to reach to the root cause. Once you find the root you ensure you orient your actions in a manner which can give a solution to help you move forward in life’s journey.

How To Do It :

The best way to introspect is to ask questions which have more to do with What? Than Why?

“Why” questions can highlight our limitations and stir up negative emotions, while “what” questions help keep us curious and positive about the future-Eurich, 2017.As per Woronko, n.d.

These are the 10 important questions which one should ask while he is self-introspecting oneself:

• Am I using my time wisely?
• Am I taking anything for granted?
• Am I employing a healthy perspective?
• Am I living true to myself?
• Am I waking up in the morning ready to take on the day?
• Am I thinking negative thoughts before I fall asleep?
• Am I putting enough effort into my relationships?
• Am I taking care of myself physically?
• Am I letting matters that are out of control stress me out?
• Am I achieving the goals that I’ve set for myself?

Summary:

In this article I have tried to coin some researches and life observations from my practical book of life to bring forth the key importance of self-assessment. It is just a first part of this piece , we will get into more detail in our next in the series of self-introspection where we will cover what are the tools to achieve this state of mind and how we can benefit from it,with some practical examples to make our case stronger.

So I would like to close this piece, on this positive note:

Do whatever you want to do with your life, but make sure you are not becoming a burden for yourself and for your loved ones around. If something is not right internally you need to speak up, go inward and share the feelings by asking for help, so that you don’t end up messing your valuable life for nothing. You have the capabilities to deliver excellence you just need right perception to see this life as a beautiful medium to express your hidden potential. Explore it , question it and do wonderful things, never settle and challenge your status quo to create new opportunities for you and for the people around you. Be happy for what you have and try to utilize it to your full potential to innovate and create something meaningful and wonderful.

Thanks for being a true inspiration and for appreciating my endeavor to write more. Keep clapping Keep Motivating.

THANK YOU….

Why Introspection Is Crucial For All? was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.