Who are you? What makes you do the things you do? What are your strengths and weaknesses? All of these questions can be answered with a bit of introspection.
In fact, learning to introspect can help make things easier for us both now and in the future.
Let’s talk about how.
Understanding your personality
Using introspection to better understand your personality is a great idea. In doing this, you are more mindful of the thoughts and feelings that you have. As well as the actions that you take because of them.
Remember, we act on our emotions a lot of the time. Sometimes it is okay, sometimes not so much. If we introspect, we can learn more about why we act the way we do in certain situations, and how to make adjustments if necessary.
For example:
Let’s say you recently got into a heated argument with your friend. When you’re introspecting, you need to be mindful of things such as
- What the argument was over
- Why you felt so strongly about the issue
- Why your friend felt so strongly about the issue.
- How you think your friend perceived the interaction
- What could have been done differently
etc.
When we introspect on things such as these, we will start to see patterns in our thinking and behavior. This makes it easier to know which areas we need to improve on.
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Maximizing the benefits
Understanding our personality is very important because if we are aware of our shortcomings, we can learn to improve upon them.
If you know your optimum productivity is predicated on eating a nice breakfast, then consider eating before an important event.
How do you think?
It is good to analyze how you think. This way you become more aware of patterns in your thought process. For instance, do you think more analytically or emotionally?
It’s important to keep in mind that our emotions can potentially lead to biases that result in irrational thinking.
For instance, just because someone you normally disagree with says something, doesn’t make what they said untrue.
Pros and cons
Through introspection, we can become aware our strengths and weaknesses. Which can be helpful for many reasons.
Whether it be self-improvement, job compatibility, or something else.
By strengthening areas we are weak in, we grow as people. But that can only take place when we become more mindful of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Conclusion
Introspection can be incredibly valuable for us. It can help us solve problems, grow as people, understand our shortcomings, and more.
All it takes is time, effort, and a little bit of patience and we will be well on our way to a greater understanding of ourselves.