CONNECT ALONE WITH YOUR MIND & INNER-SELF –
Spare & give yourself 15-20 minutes each day to THINK AND PRACTICE THE INSIGHT, INTRO-SPECTION & SELF -ANALYSIS (Aatm-Chintan and Manan) WITH CLEAR UNDERSTANDING UNDER OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE – regarding priorities of your Life, Career & other important issues.
The best time for this mental exercise is morning. (so sleep little early at night if needed)
This will not only make your vision & path clear but will also boost personal strengths, will-power, self-confidence, show solutions & also overcome weakness if any.
Introspection can be defined as taking time to think deeply both about yourself and the outside world.
Introspection is the first step to living our best lives, and ultimately, affecting positive change in the world around us. “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom
Introspection can be a process of healthy self-reflection, examination, and exploration, which is good for your well-being and your brain.
Self-introspection or looking inward is an important part of self-awareness and can help people gain insight into their own feelings and behavior. By implementing self-introspection practices we will gain a greater sense of self, better relationships, and stronger decision-making skills.
An introspective person is someone who regularly looks inward to try to understand their mind, thoughts, feelings, and inner workings. They might engage in meditation or other contemplative practices.
Powerful thinking is thinking with a purpose. Powerful thinking inspires. It leads to creativity and action. It leads to making choices that leave you feeling that you can make a difference — in your life.
Introspection gives you access to understanding yourself, self reflection lets you process what you learn, and insights are the answers you come up with and that you can act upon. Through self awareness, you become less likely to veer off track when difficult emotions surface.
Introspection is difficult because you must be honest with yourself. And most of us prefer to lie because the “truth is scary”… That's the hard part — being honest, with myself and others. But it can become paralyzing just examining ourselves, without doing something about it… only then do we grow.
Reflecting helps you to develop your skills and review their effectiveness, rather than just carry on doing things as you have always done them. It is about questioning, in a positive way, what you do and why you do it and then deciding whether there is a better, or more efficient, way of doing it in the future.
Reflection time, may involve 5 steps:
1 - Be Intentional. Make it a priority. ...
2 - Start Where You Are. Schedule time with yourself, and commit to keeping it. ...
3 - Ponder a Big Question&be honest with yourself during the process.
Think and consider quietly, attentively and deeply.
4 - Jot Down Insights. ...
5 - Repeat Soon.
All you need to do is ask yourself some questions. Ask yourself questions about yourself. Write down the questions, then write down your answers to the questions. Ask yourself about your past, present, and future, and compose answers to the questions that are positive, insightful, and motivating to you.
Reflection is the most important step to understanding, helping, and changing ourselves, because it gives you the chance to analyse one aspect of your past - a decision made or action taken - and really understand it.
The key critical thinking skills to apply are: analysis, interpretation, inference, explanation, self-regulation, open-mindedness, and problem-solving.
Thinking critically entails knowledge and application of the standards: clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, and fairness.
How do you know if you lack self-awareness?
Signs you lack self-awareness
How To Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills
Good critical thinkers are able to stay as objective as possible when looking at information or a situation. They focus on facts, and on the scientific evaluation of the information at hand. Objective thinkers seek to keep their emotions (and those of others) from affecting their judgment
Why Self Awareness is Important
According to researchers, knowing yourself better results in “stronger relationships, a clearer sense of purpose, and greater well-being, self-acceptance, and happiness.” These benefits can help you in almost every area of life. They’ll make you a better manager, employee, colleague, parent, spouse, and friend.
How do you look within for the answers to your most vexing challenges?
This guide is for people who want to practice self awareness and introspection, but don’t have a lot of time. Over this 7-minute read, you’ll find sections on:
What is Self Awareness?
The American Psychological Association defines self awareness as “self-focused attention or knowledge.” it means paying attention to yourself. It’s knowing what’s going on in your life. It’s knowing whether you’re happy with what’s happening in your world. What are your aspirations for your career, your family, and your life?
Going deeper, self awareness means understanding your personality. You also understand your values, your relationships, and your beliefs. Self awareness includes understanding how you process your experiences. Do you like to reflect on what happens each day or do you avoid thinking about your feelings?
Gaining greater self awareness is a long-term process, not an overnight achievement. You do it over time by creating a routine of self-reflection and introspection. It’s something you’ll do for the rest of your life.
The Benefits of Self Awareness and Introspection
You want a life change that will last. A regular practice of self reflection and introspection can help you take the right actions today to achieve your goals in the future.
The goal of self awareness is actionable insight you can use to change your life for the better.
But how do you access those insights? Self awareness involves three elements to get you where you want to go:
Introspection gives you access to understanding yourself, self reflection lets you process what you learn, and insights are the answers you come up with and that you can act upon.
In addition to leading to insights for what to do, self awareness also makes it more likely you’ll do as you say. Self awareness increases your ability to exercise control over your emotions by reducing stress and anxiety and providing a greater sense of well being.
Through self awareness, you become less likely to veer off track when difficult emotions surface. Instead of doing something you later regret, you’ll be better equipped to ride out emotional troughs.
An Introspection Method: Do’s and Don’ts
Don’t Obsess
So do you just need to think about yourself all the time, right? No No. That won’t automatically lead to deeper knowledge. In fact, if you aren’t careful about how you reflect on your life, you might end up unhappier than when you began. Studies show people who spend more time in introspection “tend to have more anxiety, less positive social experiences, and more negative attitudes about themselves.”Why is that? They’re doing it wrong.
Don’t Ask the Wrong Questions
When we engage in introspection, we too often start by asking why questions. It might be as simple as, “Why do I feel this way?” We search for the reasons underlying our discontent. On the surface, it makes sense, but it can lead to misery. That’s because when we ask why, our brain points toward the most obvious answer. We usually land on the one that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. That’s because most of our motives are beyond our conscious awareness. It takes more than ruminating to bring root causes to the surface. We tend to turn to answers that feel true in the moment. Unfortunately, these easy answers are frequently dead wrong.
For example, if you lose your temper at a coworker, you might think, “I just can’t work with her. She really rubs me the wrong way.” But the real reason you snapped might be that you’re anxious about an upcoming performance review.
That’s why asking why questions is the wrong kind of self reflection. It can lead you to see relationships between two things that do not exist or to overestimate the degree to which two things are related to each other. This is a cognitive bias called illusory correlation.
Here’s another example: let’s say you submit a proposal at work. One of the members of the evaluation committee sat on the previous committee that judged one of your ideas, and he rejected it. All of a sudden, you are sure your current proposal will fail. Why? Because you believe that person had something to do with your recent defeat, even though you don’t have any evidence to back this up. This kind of thinking only serves to damage your perception of fairness at work.
Why questions can cause you to obsess over your problems. They lead to greater anxiety and symptoms of depression.
Ask the Right Self Reflection Question
Instead of asking why questions, you need to ask questions that will help you focus on solutions or goals. That’s why you should try asking what questions. Ask questions like, “What am I feeling right now?” rather than, “Why do I feel so terrible?” This kind of thinking can help you to name your emotions, which has been shown to reduce negative feelings and attitudes.
Also, avoid asking yourself a problem-centered question. Don’t ask, “What difficulty am I facing right now?” Instead, frame the question around a goal, as in, “What would I like my relationship with my boss to look like a month from now?” Coaches and counselors are learning that solution-focused questions make their clients feel good, whereas problem-focused questions make their clients feel less satisfied.
If you have a persistent problem on your mind, ask yourself questions that shift your focus to its possible solution. These could be as straightforward as, “What is one possible solution to this problem?” and then, “What is one way I could start to move toward creating this solution?”
Using solution-focused questions has two benefits:
1. It reveals potential answers to the problems
2. It increases your confidence in your ability to solve future dilemmas.
-A feeling of agency and control affects your feeling of confidence, improves your self-worth, and increases the odds you’ll follow-through on your intentions.
-Why is Self Awareness so Hard?
In many ways buying a self-help book or looking for inspiration from a guru can give us the quick feeling that we’re doing something about our problems. However, self awareness requires finding time to answer our problems for ourselves and by ourselves.
Although there are numerous benefits to cultivating self awareness, the practice does take time. Thankfully, that time is free and available to us if we plan ahead.
Instead of jumping to easy solutions, make time to sit down and think. Schedule at least 15 minutes for reflection into your daily—or at least twice weekly—routine. Consider making time for reflection your first activity of the day. Put your phone away, wait to turn on your computer, put a “do not disturb” sign on your monitor, and give yourself that quarter of an hour to think.
You may have to get creative with how you organize your day so you can find uninterrupted time.
For me, writing what’s on my mind before I start my workday is an excellent way to find answers I never knew I had in me.
Clearly, the answers to all your problems can’t always be found within you. There is certainly an appropriate time for research. However, making time to think and reflect can help you whittle down the few questions where you need more information rather than ruminating (or even worse, Googling) endlessly.
