From Over-Thinking to Peace of Mind
Turn your noisy inner dialogue into your greatest ally - without forcing positive thinking or trying to silence your mind.
Are You Your Own Best Friend or Your Own Worst Enemy?
Be honest: do you treat yourself well - or do you treat yourself like sh*t?
What is the dialogue in your mind like? How do you speak to yourself most of the time, in the privacy of your thoughts?
Sadly, for most of us the answer is not great. We are stuck in an abusive relationship with ourselves.
I bet you're all too familiar with:
If someone talked to you the way you talk to yourself, in your head...
...would you want to be friends with them?
If the answer is "no" and you'd like to turn it into a "yes", I have good news. I believe that Introspective Writing is the most effective tool for making that happen.
And it's easier than you might think.
What if Your Overthinking Mind Could Be a Super-Power?
I was always told that I'm an over-thinker like it's a curse or something.
"You think too much!"
"You live in your head instead of in the real world!"
"You're day dreaming your life away!"
And when most of my thinking was unpleasant and self-judgmental, it really did feel like a curse.
What use is this neurotic mind, running on overdrive all day? All it's doing is making me feel miserable!
Only later in life did I realize the error in this attitude. As CEO of a software company, I was pretty much getting paid to think. And getting paid handsomely, at that.
Clearly, the thinking itself wasn't the problem.
The overthinker's mind is a powerful tool. The question is simple: what is this tool being used for?
How the Voice in My Head Became My Greatest Ally
As a teen and young adult, my life was very difficult.
Not because of outside circumstances - I grew up in a safe, wealthy nation, I had a peaceful home, I had what looked like a fairly normal childhood in many ways.
No, my suffering was playing out in the privacy of my mind.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was suffering from depression for many of my childhood and teenage years. I had experienced some bullying and I had often felt inadequate and not good enough - I felt like a failure, basically.
And I had internalized the shame and pressure as well as the bullying.
So while my neighborhood was a pleasant place to live in, my mind was not.
Much of my day was spent ruminating on my failures and shortcomings. I was not kind to myself.
I experienced first had that the saying "wherever you go, there you are" can feel like a curse.
I'm very happy to say that this changed, dramatically. The quality of my mind today cannot be compared to what I was used to for so many years of my life.
So, what changed?
10,000 Pages Later: How I Discovered the Ultimate Writing Technique for Personal Development
In my early 20s, I decided that I had to do something about all this suffering I was experiencing.
At this point, in addition to the inner turmoil in my mind, things also started going poorly in my external world: I had dropped out of university, I had been unemployed and working crappy temp jobs for about 2 years in a row, I had no career prospects and I found myself trapped in a relationship that was not good for me.
Thankfully, I had the idea to look for answers in books.
I started reading everything and anything I could get my hands on, that promised to solve one or more of my many problems. I read business books, self help books, books about psychology, the brain, happiness, habits, nutrition, philosophy, communication skills, the spiritual path... you name it.
I tried everything these books suggested in a somewhat desperate attempt to escape my dire circumstances.
What I couldn't do was afford a coach or therapist, so I was left to my own devices.
Several of the books I read suggested writing exercises of various kinds. I did all the suggested exercises and I noticed that some of them did seem to help me.
They helped me see things more clearly. They helped me think more clearly, even. And sometimes, it felt a bit like a knot inside me started to loosen, when I was writing.
I continued exploring writing as a tool for my personal development.
Over the years, I wrote endless pages, in notebooks, on paper pads, in Microsoft Word, then Evernote, then Google Docs, then Notion...
Without exaggeration, I have written 10s of thousands of pages of notes.
How Introspective Writing Changes Your Mind - and Your Relationships
Introspective Writing changes how you relate to yourself. It helps you welcome yourself more fully, with less tension, less judgement and more kindness.
A wonderful side effect of this is that it also changes how you show up towards other people.
The more you learn to welcome yourself as you are, the more you can welcome others as they are. The more you learn to respond with openness and kindness towards yourself, the more you do it towards others.
People will notice this about you. There is a very different quality of presence in a person who has a calm mind, compared to a person full of tension, fear and self judgement.
Being in a conversation with someone who can barely hear your words over the noise in their minds is a very different experience from talking to someone who has the space and presence to listen.
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Changes You Will Notice When You Practice Introspective Writing
What exactly can you expect, when you start the practice of Introspective Writing? Here are some effects people typically experience:
Develop Self Acceptance & Empathy
Introspective writing is the most effective way I've ever found to unwind the inner tension that comes from a lack of self acceptance and self love. It's a way to stop the endless cycle of self abuse happening in our minds.
Build Constructive Habits of Mind
With Introspective Writing, you gain access to your brain's command center. You can decide what your habits of mind look like. I choose the word "constructive" because this is not about forcing positive thoughts or deluding yourself. It's simply about making your own choices about habits of mind, just as you want to make your own choices about habits in general.
Replace Your Inauthentic Beliefs
Everyone I've worked with discovers something through introspective work: much of your beliefs aren't your own. They were installed in your mind years or decades ago - often by people you don't even like or particularly agree with! Through Introspective Writing, you can uncover these inauthentic beliefs and replace them with your authentic beliefs.
Relieve Yourself from Mental Clutter & Noise
Upon introspection, many of us find that our mind is a messy, cluttered and somewhat unpleasant place. Introspective Writing is a great way to do some spring cleaning in your mind. To let things calm down and to put yourself in a state where the incessant chatter is no longer necessary.
Break the Cycles that Don't Serve You
A lesson I learned through Introspective Writing: whenever an unpleasant thing keeps happening over and over again in my life, it's always because of something unresolved in my psyche. Through writing, I can understand how I'm doing this to myself (or I'm continually inviting the same problem into my life) and gain the clarity to break out of that cycle.
Just Retreat to a Cave, Meditate & Transcend the Self!?
In spiritual circles, the solution to a noisy mind that everyone jumps to is: transcend the self! Achieve a state of no-self!
How? Well, I guess sit on a pillow and meditate for long enough to quiet your mind...
I have nothing against meditation. And I believe that the self is ultimately a kind of illusion.
However, I also found this advice tremendously unhelpful for one simple reason: meditation felt like more of the same problem!
My experience of meditation was that it was difficult and a form of mental strain.
It was another thing to do with my mind and another thing I wasn't doing right, somehow. Another practice where my hyperactive mind was made my enemy.
What I found is that meditation practice, quieting the mind and overcoming egoic thinking was made 100x easier once I befriended my mind.
And I did that with Introspective Writing.
TK Accessibility
One of the things I love about Introspective Writing is how accessible it is. All you need is a pen & paper (or a digital writing device) and some time. Not even a lot of time, in many cases.
Can you get similar benefits from other practices such as working with a therapist or coach or doing a meditation retreat? No doubt, yes!
And can you improve your relationships by going to therapy and learning communication frameworks in retreats, workshops and meetups? Absolutely!
But none of these things are as instantly and easily available as Introspective Writing.
This was really crucial for me, back when I developed this practice. I was way too broke to even consider hiring a coach or therapist. Neither could I afford to go to workshops and retreats. And as much as I wish every city and every town had good support groups and meetups and such, that is far from reality.
I love that with Introspective Writing, you are empowered to help yourself - any time and no matter what challenge you face.
I am happy to say that these days, I do work with coaches and therapists and go to intensive retreats. And I've gotten lots of value out of it. And yet, Introspective Writing is still my go-to tool. It's still the first and often last thing I use to process my experiences, gain clarity and make better decisions.
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