Socrates said “Know thyself”. This famous maxim, meaning “there is within you a principle of excellence which must guide your actions: reason”, is an invitation to introspection. Indeed, what better way to achieve spiritual awakening than by knowing one’s thoughts, emotions and reason? Self-knowledge has always been considered an ideal in life. Those who observe and learn about themselves also learn about others and the world around them. What’s more, they bring calm and serenity into their lives. To this end, self-observation is the most effective personal development technique.

Writers and philosophers such as Rousseau and Montaigne were among the first to adopt this approach. In their autobiographical works, they learned about themselves in order to better define their personalities. This faculty is common to all human beings, but not without perseverance and willpower.

Introspection: what does it mean?

Introspection is a meditative technique that involves observing one’s thoughts and emotions as if they were not one’s own. In other words, we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes – an observer – to observe ourselves.

In fact, the word introspection comes from the Latin introspectus, meaning “to look inside oneself”. It’s a state in which we analyze our thoughts and emotions to find out who we are and why we react in one way and not another.

The practice of mental self-observation has been around for centuries. In psychology, it enables us to look inside ourselves to study our personality in particular, and the world in general. It can be used in all aspects of daily life, especially in situations where we interact with others.

Why use self-observation?

Mental self-observation or introspection is an innate faculty. This means that anyone can take advantage of its benefits.

ENSURING INNER PEACE
Self-observation is a way of releasing nervous tension, in short, of relaxing. Focusing on yourself, your consciousness and your thoughts helps you to love and accept yourself as you are. This is essential for finding happiness.

IMPROVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS
Indeed, focusing on our inner self helps us to live better with others, since self-observation enables us to better connect with our thoughts. By knowing our reactions and emotions better, we can anticipate them, and thus modify them so that they don’t offend the sensibilities of those around us.

The mental practice of permanent self-examination is necessary, because understanding our own weaknesses or shortcomings is the path to understanding those of others. When we admit that we have faults, weaknesses… we accept better that others are not perfect. Besides, who is?

IMPROVING DAILY LIFE THROUGH SELF-OBSERVATION
Knowing your thoughts and emotions enables you to change negative emotions and behaviours that are detrimental to your physical and mental well-being… In short, to improve anything that brings negativity into your life: prejudices, mental ruminations, etc.

Self-observation is a dynamic and active act. In fact, it can be carried out when we interact with others or when we are faced with a given situation. By becoming aware of what we’re feeling at a given moment (anger, sadness, joy…), we can either attenuate or, on the contrary, heighten our emotions.

FOR BETTER SELF-UNDERSTANDING
Through mental self-observation exercises, we learn to anticipate our reactions in the light of what’s happening. Ultimately, this leads to greater self-knowledge and self-mastery: mastery of emotions, thoughts, behaviors and reactions…

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD
When we know ourselves better, we also know others better. You’ll understand why some people react in one way and others in another. By observing ourselves, we’re less likely to try to change others or mold them in our own image. Especially since it takes all kinds to make a world.

DEVELOPING WILLPOWER
Lack of willpower, or abulia, is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of drive that extends over time. The person has difficulty setting goals in life, and does nothing to achieve them.

Self-mastery strengthens the power of one’s thoughts. You learn to set goals and give yourself the means to achieve them.

GIVING MEANING TO LIFE
Self-observation is an ideal that enables us to exist as individuals. To seek a certain freedom that will enable you to give meaning to your life. By being objective in our self-analysis, we can more easily set goals. And achieve them! But to do so, we have to accept that there is a certain amount of the unknown in ourselves. In fact, no-one really knows themselves without introspection from time to time.

So, self-observation to understand and know ourselves better is an end in itself.

How do I go about self-observation?

Self-observation is a method that involves being both the observer and the observed.

There are several techniques for introspection or mental self-observation. Experiment with them and adopt the one that best suits your needs.

ANALYZING YOUR THOUGHTS
The aim here is to observe, not to act. In other words, you simply observe what’s going on inside you, without intervening. To do this, gently focus your attention on your thoughts until you detach yourself from your mind.

As well as helping you to become more aware of your thoughts, this self-observation technique is also effective for relieving stress and relaxing. Indeed, by concentrating on what’s going on inside you, you enter a kind of bubble. As a result, you forget everything that’s going on outside.

MEDITATION
This is undoubtedly the most common technique for self-observation and self-analysis. In fact, meditation is a method of focusing attention on oneself, as well as relaxing. And the good news is that it’s accessible to everyone. That’s right! You don’t need any particular technique to practice it as part of self-observation. What’s more, there are many different meditation techniques. So you can easily find the one that suits you best.

Whatever you do, start by relaxing completely. Forget everything around you and concentrate on your breathing. This will allow you to step back from your emotions. By being a spectator of what’s going on inside you, you can act and react lucidly.

At first, you may find it hard to stay focused. But, in time, you’ll be able to practice this introspective exercise, even as you go about your daily tasks.

SELF-OBSERVATION: TAKING TIME FOR YOURSELF
We want so much to do well, or to please everyone, that we no longer take the time to listen to our own needs. And yet, taking time out for yourself from time to time allows you to grow and understand yourself better. To do this, take a few minutes each day to think only of yourself. You’ll then have the opportunity to analyze yourself, to find out where your thoughts and emotions come from, your ideations, your volitions and so on.

You can simply walk the streets, take a stroll alone in the park…

In what situations is self-observation recommended?

Self-observation is necessary in many situations. That’s why it’s important to stay focused on what you’re feeling right now. More generally, you can use it when :

Interacting with others: it helps you to reduce negative comments that could alter your relationships with others.
Exploring your personality. Self-observation: self-observation is a 100% active method. Even if we’re spectators of what’s going on inside us, what we observe enables us to get to know ourselves and to change.
Difficult or critical situations: turning negative emotions into positive reactions.

Self-observation: what are the risks and limits?

While introspection enables us to get to know ourselves and others better, in order to improve our lives and our interactions with the world, it is not as easy to put into practice. Indeed, even if no one but ourselves is in the best position to observe what’s going on inside us, psychologically speaking, it’s very difficult to be both the observer and the observed. Analyzing without being able to intervene is far from being within everyone’s grasp. It’s even more difficult to look at ourselves as we live.

Indeed, when observing ourselves, it’s virtually impossible to be objective. At any moment, we run the risk of lying to ourselves, simply because we don’t like what we see, and we can’t intervene.

IS IT IMPOSSIBLE TO BE MENTALLY ACTIVE AND INTROSPECTIVE?
Introspection can run up against several incompatibilities:

An incompatibility of mood, which means that the observer cannot remain objective. For example, in the case of anger or sadness, it’s impossible to detach oneself from these feelings (anger or sadness) to find out what caused them. This assumes that when we observe ourselves, we are sadder or angrier. This impossibility of cold observation prevents controllable results.
An incompatibility of nature: no-one is capable of carrying out two cognitive activities of the same nature at the same time. In this case, it is impossible to be both the observed and the observer.
Incompatibility of location: to observe what’s going on inside oneself, one must mentally detach oneself from oneself. Otherwise, we’re observing outside ourselves.
What’s more, since mental self-observation is not simply an observation of what’s going on inside us, but also a description of us, self-observation often leads to different results. And this despite the fact that we are observing similar mental situations. But why such a wide range of results? Well, as we’ve said, we may be tempted to lie to ourselves, to play a role so that what we observe pleases us. But more than anything else, introspection is not an exact method in the sense that it is not scientific. As such, results are neither repeatable nor verifiable. That’s why it often gets a bad press from psychologists.

SELF-OBSERVATION REMAINS INDISPENSABLE
But that’s no reason not to indulge in mental self-observation whenever you can. Even if it isn’t a rigorous and complete method, it’s still an excellent way of understanding what’s going on inside us, and of sharing this observation with others.

It also enables us to understand our strengths and weaknesses, even if this means a certain amount of humiliation. And even if self-understanding seems destructive in some cases.

Observe yourself, then what?

Self-observation doesn’t stop once you’ve looked inside yourself. These observations should be kept on a notepad, for example, and used for cognitive purposes. More precisely, the results can be used to understand the way we think and act. What’s more, it’s an excellent way of studying the human mind and human behavior.

Nevertheless, there’s no point in trying to rationalize what we’ve observed. Yes, the aim of self-observation is to understand intuitively what’s going on inside us. As such, it is different from knowledge.

Have you ever carried out a self-observation? How did it go?