Ask yourself a question

Introspection is the act of analysing your own self, by thinking about what you think about, and by considering your behaviour and the range of emotions that you experience.  Introspection often involves asking yourself questions that you would normally ask other people.  Introspection is in essence self inspection.

Answering the questions we ask other people however is not always straight forward.  Often the reason we ask other people questions in the first place is because we do not know the answer to begin with.  This peculiarity is not only limited to the questions we ask but also the answers that we pose as possibilities; what we tell other people to do when they ask for our advice is generally what we think they should do, not necessarily what we would do.  Nowhere is this more evident than when we ask ourselves a question and give an answer we would give other people, yet refuse the answer for ourselves, labelling it inadequate because after all, we're different.

Asking yourself a question in this regard ends up being more of a method of coping with our thought processes, and less about finding an actual answer.  In other words every question we ask ourselves is a rhetorical question.  We ask them out of self reassurance that we are aware of our actions, not because we actually believe we will gain any new understanding.  You can turn around and ask why this happens and there is perhaps an explanation. 

I have explained before how our conscious mind is somewhat limited and the bulk of our thoughts occur in our subconscious; with the conscious mind only being consulted when the subconscious needs extra information.  You can look at that interaction and say that perhaps our subconscious is trying to process our behaviour and our thoughts and feelings and identifies things that we are doing which it thinks we shouldn't - things which contradict our beliefs - the actions that go against what we would tell others to do.  Once identified, the presentation of that realisation is made to the conscious mind by suggesting we question ourselves.  This is easily summed by imagining our subconscious mind asking our conscious "Are you aware this is what you are doing?" and our rejection of the advice we would give others as our conscious replying "Yes, I know, but I'm doing it anyway" - leaving the subconscious to ponder this.

What does understanding this achieve?  Well in truth it does not change much other than to highlight self conflict which we may be in denial over.  Realising this thought process might be what is taking place can allow you to realise that no matter how much you tell yourself you are fine with something, in reality, you're really not.  You are conflicted and you are being hypocritical and often in situations like this the only time you will come to drop the pretence and accept that you were in denial, is when you experience great hurt.  Pain so strong you can't ignore it.  Emotion so deep that your heart takes over and says enough is enough. 

Do we ask for this?  The knee jerk reaction is to say no, but if you know what you are doing and you ignore your own beliefs and your own advice and do it anyway, are you not guilty of putting yourself in jeopardy?  If you walk out into live traffic without looking, despite your thoughts and feelings telling you not to, is it your fault that you get run over or the fault of the driver?