Evolution

The only constant of life is ..change.

How many times have you come across a situation when you felt that despite giving your best to tackle the situation successfully, somewhere you lacked? or things are not happening the way you wanted despite you giving the best of your efforts?

Quite many times... Isn't it? So what did you do in these situations? I have come across people who said that they changed their ways and heeded on to a path where they would have to face less of such problems. But a few said - they introspected.....

So, here we shall talk about the second kind of people - the ones who introspected. 

If we go by a dictionary definition, Introspection means the examination of one's own thoughts and feelings or rather a self - examination of things. The words seem easy but actually are difficult to understand in practicality. To keep it simple:

Every day when you stand in front of a mirror, what do you see?

You would say what kind of a question is that, obviously we'd see our own reflection there and what else? But I would say, You see yourself there as you want to see yourself or rather want people to see you as.

And now again a question: Do you judge a person by his appearance or by his deeds?

You would say definitely by his deeds. Appearance may be just a momentary way of judging but a person is judged by his actions whether known or unknown. 

So then when we judge others by their actions then why to we expect others to judge us on the basis of our outer - appearance? One reason can be : That is how we perceive ourselves and hence want others as well to go as per our perceptions. But that never happens.
We are often afraid to face our own realities and want to believe our perception as reality. But if we start facing the actual  realities and think about what went right and what went wrong, then our process of introspection shall begin.

Often introspection doesn't just happen when you yourself think about situations or yourself but it also happens when you open up to receive a feedback. That is the best way to face your own reality because your actions decide what people perceive about you, which you may not realize but others definitely do make a note of it. If you can accept a positive feedback, then you should be ready to face a negative feedback as well. No body is perfect... if we have positive elements within ourselves, we surely do have some negative elements as well. Former is what we accept readily but latter is most difficult to even listen for some people, leave aside accepting it. They can't see their perceived images of themselves going blur.

That is where the problem lies. If we can listen to a negative feedback taking it in a very positive sense and then start thinking about how we went wrong, what could have been done and so on... then we actually begin a successful process of Introspection. The best way to have an honest feedback is to approach the person(s) whom you trust the most and request him/her to give a very honest feedback about you. At first even they would think twice but if you can have an honest feedback from them, you would open up a horizon for yourself to improve .

Now once you begin the process of introspection by taking the views of people or in case that is not available then going back and re-evaluating the whole process and trying and identify where you were lacking each time you go wrong or fail in some situation, you actually get a chance to upgrade and evolve yourself. This evolution happens because you would know how could things be improved the next time you approach it. Also you would come to know if you had any skill / ability deficit which can be worked upon.
With all this knowledge to work upon you start incorporating the changes within you and that helps you evolve

Just like evolution never stops, improvements also never stop. You keep introspecting, You keep Improving and if you keep improving then you keep evolving. Evolving yourself into a better person is a great habit to get addicted to... Do give it a try!

" It is easier to try to imitate someone's "perfect" life and getting nothing out of it. But it is more satisfying and pleasurable to improve your 'imperfect' life and see it become so perfect that people would want to try imitating it"