Why is introspection important

We know emotional intelligence is important. It helps us empathize with other people so we communicate better and fight less.

It helps us understand our own actions so we can be more productive and less reactionary. Using the Androcles and the Lion fable , the video makes a really powerful point about reacting vs. We go on reacting like this instead of actually addressing the problem. For a long time, I ignored my issues with depression, for example, because I thought the best solution was to just suck it up and ignore the pain. For some of us, not very often.

We only look in the mirror when we have no other choice. We would rather look elsewhere to find the cause of our stress, our discomfort, our problems. It is a lot easier to blame circumstances or someone else than to examine our own role or contribution and accept responsibility for our actions. In my recent post on Leadership , I failed to mention introspection as one of the qualities of a great leader. Over the years, my consistent practice of introspection has become habit.

Here's why you should begin exercising your introspection muscle in life. Self-examination can be painful because being brutally honest requires us to acknowledge our faults, weakness, failures and shortcomings. Examining our own conduct and accepting responsibility for the consequences allows us to move on from mistakes and chart new courses in our relationships.

It helps us navigate. Introspection is a gift in that it gives us complete freedom to determine our own future and our own success because we can choose to operate in our areas of strength while acknowledging our weaknesses and managing them. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Introspection is a process that involves looking inward to examine one's own thoughts and emotions.

The term is often used in everyday language to refer to the informal process of exploring one's inner life, but the term also applies to a more formalized process that was once used as an experimental technique in psychology. The experimental use of introspection is similar to what you might do when you analyze your own thoughts and feelings but in a much more structured and rigorous way.

The term introspection can be used to describe both an informal reflection process and a more formalized experimental approach that was used early on in psychology's history. In everyday use, introspection is a way of looking inward and examining one's internal thoughts and feelings.

As a research tool, however, the process was much more controlled and structured. The first meaning is the one that most people are probably the most familiar with, which involves informally examining our own internal thoughts and feelings.

When we reflect on our thoughts, emotions , and memories and examine what they mean, we are engaged in introspection. The term introspection is also used to describe a research technique that was first developed by psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. Also known as experimental self-observation , Wundt's technique involved training people to carefully and objectively as possible to analyze the content of their own thoughts.

Some historians suggest that introspection is not the most accurate term to refer to the methods that Wundt utilized.

Introspection implies a level of armchair soul-searching, but the methods that Wundt used were a much more highly controlled and rigid experimental technique. The process that Wundt used is what sets his methods apart from casual introspection. In Wundt's lab, highly trained observers were presented with carefully controlled sensory events. Wundt believed that the observers needed to be in a state of high attention to the stimulus and in control of the situation.

The observations were also repeated numerous times. What was the purpose of these observations? Wundt believed that there were two key components that make up the contents of the human mind: sensations and feelings. In order to understand the mind, Wundt believed that researchers needed to do more than simply identify the structure or elements of the mind. Instead, it was essential to look at the processes and activities that occur as people experience the world around them.

Wundt focused on making the introspection process as structured and precise as possible. Observers were highly trained and the process itself was rigid and highly-controlled. In many instances, respondents were asked to simply respond with a "yes" or "no. The goal of this process was to make introspection as scientific as possible.

Edward Titchener , a student of Wundt's, also utilized this technique although he has been accused of misrepresenting many of Wundt's original ideas. While Wundt was interested in looking at the conscious experience as a whole, Titchener instead focused on breaking down mental experiences into individual components and asked individuals to describe their mental experiences of events.