Constantly Looking Within Can Prevent You From Growing

Looking inside yourself is very necessary to make small adjustments or big changes. It is like seeing our image in a mirror and discovering ourselves with our strengths and our weaknesses, our mistakes and our successes, etc. We can listen to our emotions, identify everything that is not making us happy, solve problems that are preventing us from growing. Thus, it is essential to make any diagnosis.

But looking too much can make us blind. Therefore, it is necessary to know how to find the balance. Because analyzing ourselves is positive, as long as we do not fall into the extreme of totally ignoring what is happening outside. The following fable perfectly illustrates what we are talking about:

“One day a butterfly found a centipede. He had never seen an animal like this and was amazed at how it could move its legs in such a coordinated way. His astonishment was such that he could not hide it.

-Centipede, how do you move your feet with such precision?

The centipede had never thought about it, it just did, it came out naturally. However, he paused to reflect on his “astonishing ability.”

After a while, and after much thought, he discovered that he could no longer move ”.

Focusing too much can cause problems

If we pay too much attention to ourselves, it can happen to us like a centipede. The time will come when something natural, which we had not noticed, stops working as it did before. This usually happens when we try to make sense of what, in reality, does not have it.

Have you ever stopped to think about your heartbeat? When you start to reflect on how it beats without your controlling it, how it can stop at any moment because yes, you may start to overwhelm yourself. You’re trying to find an explanation for something that doesn’t have one. The result is not very positive, as it translates into anxiety and stress.

All this does not mean that we do not look within ourselves. As we said, it is necessary to know ourselves, to identify those emotions that we are feeling and that we must manage properly. However, doing this does not mean that we are looking for an explanation for what we experience, are or feel, but that we are identifying all this to accept ourselves.

To accept ourselves, when we look within ourselves , it is necessary that we eliminate from our mind certain beliefs that have accompanied us for years. For example, imagine that you are looking inside yourself and discover certain attitudes that indicate that you have a strong resentment and hatred. As socially this is considered negative, you may reject what you feel and begin to consider yourself a bad person.

This will not help you grow. You need to accept these emotions, without thinking about what society thinks is right or wrong. When you are able to do this, you can reorient them where you want without feeling bad, without thinking too much about them.

• Don’t try to rationalize everything : trying to logically justify all our emotions can be a dry and fruitless process. He thinks that it is a defense mechanism so as not to feel bad, so as not to censor ourselves. This will prevent you from accepting events in which you cannot or have not been able to intervene.

• Free yourself from fear : we are afraid of what we can find when we look within ourselves. But this fear comes from everything we think about. If I hate I am a bad person, if I make mistakes I am a failure. If you change your point of view, if you free yourself from preconceptions, you will realize that nothing is what it seemed.
• Listen to your emotions, don’t interpret them : not everything has a cause and an effect. That is why it is important to listen to your emotions carefully and not try to interpret them because we can do it wrong. Am I in love? Am I doing the right thing? Feel your emotions and they will speak for themselves.

If you find it very difficult not to fall into the clutches of misinterpretation, you can practice Mindfulness. This practice will help you grow and become an observer of reality and of yourself. It will guide you so that you know how not to make value judgments, how not to fall into hasty interpretations and conclusions.

Do not be afraid to look inside yourself, to discover yourself, to observe you and to accept yourself. Do it without criticizing yourself, eliminating any form of pre-established idea. Just look at yourself, discover yourself, feel and never think or worry too much about what is being revealed to you. But above all, do not do it compulsively, so that the exterior is removed from your attention, among other things because what is outside can also give us valuable information about ourselves.

Perhaps growing is much easier and we are the ones who make it difficult.