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Introspectivity – Home
Both Wiktionary and Your Dictionary define introspectivity as “The quality of being introspective”.
We could also use the word “introspectiveness” (the state of being introspective).
If we want to understand emotions, we should make introspection. Sometimes, we think this is not important. And so few people worry about knowing how emotions work. Instead, we try to know much more about how our bodies work.
In fact, when we go to the doctor and he says we should treat the gall bladder, almost everyone knows what he means. Many read books, listen to other people or study anatomy. They learn to know what their internal organs are, and how they work. So, the doctor can detect their physical problems, tell them what to do, or take action to keep them sound.
This regards our physical body.
Understand emotions
Is this also the case for our emotional world? Do we understand emotions? Do we notice how they work within us, which thoughts, intentions and expectations govern them, what stress they cause and how they influence our decisions?
How important is introspection to us? How much time did we spend in our lives analysing emotions? What are the mechanisms that work within us?
Are we attempting to suppress instinct?
When we are born, instinct helps us adapt to life in the physical world. It makes us understand, when hungry, that it is time to eat and, when tired, that it is time to rest. It makes us move or rest, and it makes us do the right movements to keep our muscles in shape; and it makes our body grow without us having to do something. The less we do to correct this instinctive intelligence, the better. The less we learn from adults to behave in unnatural ways, the better.
Probably the same thing happens with our emotionality. Primitive men knew when to be afraid and when to show joy or sadness. For the modern man, things are otherwise. Because of education, we do not express our emotions. We are ashamed of them, and we adapt them to an environment that often judges and condemns them.
This way, we neutralize the natural attempts to restore emotional balance.
How to re-establish emotional self-regulation?
First, we need to know where we block it. We should dissolve our emotional blocks. But to do this, we need to know what are the mechanisms that create them. Emotional blocks remain if the mechanisms that create them go on working undisturbed.
Aurora Mazzoldi’s paintings show the mechanisms in action. They help us understand how emotional blocks arise. They provide us with the key to understanding and solving them.
Why should we practice introspection?
If we understand how the inner mechanisms work, we can decide how to live. To live well, we should free ourselves from inconvenient patterns.
But how can we become free from inconvenient patterns while keeping the internal mechanisms intact?
And how can we free ourselves from behavior patterns if we don’t understand how they work?
Introspection and self-management are the answer to these questions.
The book “The Power of Targeted Choices. 11 steps to better living” explains how to practice it.
Luis Pisoni