Holding yourself up to a standard and questioning whether or not your decisions, actions and motives reflect that standard seems to be less and less common these days.

What I’m talking about is personal introspection.

When you are too busy focusing on what you are going to say or do next, you miss the opportunities to actually think about, analyze and learn from what you have already done. It s a real eye opener to discover what was really motivating your actions, how you implemented your decisions and an honest appraisal of the outcome.

It’s called holding yourself accountable.

The danger of not routinely appraising your attitudes, decisions and actions is that you will continue to act in a manner which may not be in your best interest. Either because of your ignorance, avoidance or outright denial that you may in fact be the real cause of certain reoccurring problems in your life.

It’s hard to admit you are wrong about something …Especially if it turns out to be something you really believe to be true and accurate.

When you get in the habit of making little compromises and justify those actions as being “just this once” or “this is a special case”, you lose a sense of what is right and what is wrong. Your world becomes an insecure gray color of uncertainty. The lack of regular introspection opens the door for this “slippery slope” kind of behavior and lifestyle to continue without any internal safeguards. Compromising once may be a mistake. Doing it twice is a pattern. Introspection helps it remain a fixable mistake before it becomes a habit.

If you don’t take a few minutes on a regular basis to review what you’ve been thinking and doing as well as an honest appraisal of your true motives, then your life is on autopilot …And there’s a good chance the your flight plan is very flawed.

Every system of human organization allows for some kind of course correction …If your personal belief system fails to allow you to review and adjust …Then you and your belief system are responsible for the problems you which occur again and again in your life. What you believe, justify and rationalize is always the biggest challenge to your ultimate happiness.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
-Socrates

“A life without introspection is a dead-end dream.”
-Bob Baran