Reflecting on ourselves and our environments is a healthy and adaptive practice, but it should be undertaken with some care-there is, in fact, a wrong way to do it. If you don’t make the time and effort to refocus your mind on the positive through introspection, you won’t give yourself the opportunity to grow and develop.Įnhancing our ability to understand ourselves and our motivations and to learn more about our own values helps us take the power away from the distractions of our modern, fast-paced lives and instead refocus on fulfillment (Wood, 2013).
Researchers have shown that we think more than 50,000 thoughts per day, of which more than half are negative and more than 90% are just repeats from the day before (Wood, 2013). Wundt’s work eventually led to the current work on perceptual processes and the establishment of the field of cognitive psychology. Wundt focused on three areas of mental functioning: thoughts, images, and feelings. The original idea of introspection was developed by Wilhelm Wundt in the late 1800s (McLeod, 2008). The formal experimental technique is a more objective and standardized version of this, in which people train themselves to carefully analyze the contents of their own thoughts in a way that’s as unbiased as possible.
The process can be focused on either one’s current mental experience or mental experiences from the very recent past. The informal reflection process can be defined as examining one’s own internal thoughts and feelings and reflecting on what they mean. Still, both processes can be undertaken by anyone with curiosity and determination (Cherry, 2016). Introspection can be practiced both as an informal reflection process and a formal experimental approach, and the two have different definitions.
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