We should stop looking inside and start looking from outside

There can be a lot of definitions of success apart from it defining someone as a billionaire and owner of a unicorn tech startup. You can be successful in a lot of things. You lost weight and became a fitter person, you are successful. You learnt a new skill and became good at it, you are successful. I recently achieved success in knowing exactly who I am, okay, at least to a large extent.

Let me straighten up a little by starting with a disclaimer that I am not against being any of those, especially not money and materialism. I spend an hour daily on various e-commerce platforms shopping.

“Hey, Yogesh don’t need to always clarify himself while expressing his thoughts. Let him be as he is. He shouldn’t doubt his abilities and he is a better writer than he thinks he is”
“Ok, I am hearing you. I will keep that in mind”

Ohh well! Ignore the above two statements, they are just my thoughts as I am trying to pen this article down.

As Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living for human beings” and the path to knowing true wisdom is “know thyself”. I adhere to his words of wisdom and speak from experience that honest actions are results of the process of knowing yourself better. But how do you know what’s the right approach to know yourself perfectly well? I started by reading a lot of self-help bestsellers books and famous blogs. I tried to soak in all the advice I got from those. I spoke to a lot of spiritual leaders, to psychologists. One common advice got from everyone that to know myself “I have to look inside”. And well long story short, all I ended up doing was to think a lot. I started to overthink and ended up having more anxiety than before. I analysed all my actions and non-actions, the words I spoke in any set-up and the words I didn’t.

It didn’t lead me anywhere. After a point, I started hating myself for a lot of things and started feeling unworthy of anything and everything. The simple rumination — the process of thinking deeply, was leading to a lot of problems, especially I was getting stuck on every single decision I had to make. I was analysing and overanalysing to a point where I was indecisive about everything.

And then it clicked, I am approaching this wrong when I stumbled upon a research, which shows how basketball players made slow decisions because of their rumination.

I have been asked to look inside, but they didn’t tell me how. I was taking half the advice or probably the advice was half of the truth. Rest of the truth was up to me to explore. And I guess that journey to explore starts when you realise that all this time you have been doing it wrong, you were misunderstanding the teachings. I have to look inside, but not from inside. I have to look inside from “outside”.

I have to observe myself as a third person, not as myself, sans the judgement.

I have to observe my actions and the thought process behind it, the words I spoke and the reasons behind it, the way I behaved and the effects of it. The reasons alone don’t define who you are but to yourself, all that matters is that you were right in your thought. But when you start observing you from outside, you challenge that belief, you get to know it is a combination of both — what you do and why you do it, and also what you don’t and why you don’t. You do stupid things and when you analyse it with your viewpoints and your perspective, you will be always right. You will always end up justifying your actions and inactions if you are looking inside. But when you start looking from outside, you challenge your justifications towards everything and when you notice something is off and you can take corrective measures rather easily.

The “third person” who is observing from outside can be your mentor and your guide. You can tune this person to motivate you when you are down, to push you when you are procrastinating, or help you take decisions when you are being indecisive. You can tune him/her to be wiser version of yourself, more successful version of yourself, fitter, more motivated, in gist better version of whatever you want to become. And to start doing that start addressing yourself in third person instead of first-person. When you start observing your thoughts, you will sense that you talk to yourself in either first person or second person. But never in third. In both the ways you have a voice guiding, telling you what to do and what not to do. You have to train this voice to refer you in third person. Whenever you are questioning yourself, don’t question “am I right?” question “Is he/she right?” You can also follow the lead from the statements, my thoughts, I presented at the beginning of the article.

Let me outline the three main benefits I have sensed since I started thinking of myself in third person.

1. The continuous comparison between I and others diminished drastically. When I started noticing the strengths and weaknesses of everyone, including myself, through the same lens, I became more empathetic and thus the superiority and inferiority over anything and everything vanished. I used to talk to myself in second person, mostly as if I am talking to someone directly. The tone of that communication between me and my inner self was always comparative where I compared myself with anyone and everyone I came across. I justified this process, earlier, as something that everyone does. But later I sensed it being detrimental. Now when I look back, I can really feel a reduction in noise in my head which was there earlier because of regular comparison. Now the comparison is only between I and me.

2. My emotional well-being improved. When I was talking to myself in the first or second person, I always desired what others had and I didn’t. My focus shifted with the person thought process and I started looking at what I have and started working on what I, really, want to achieve in my life. I stopped comparing, as I mentioned earlier, I stopped procrastinating, more or less, and I can manage my anxiety and social awkwardness.

3. I feel I have become a little wiser and have started making better decisions. At least I am not indecisive as I used to be. And thus my work, quality of living and my relationships with people has improved over time. I am patient while listening and don’t get tempted to react quickly or chip in with my views until required. I can clearly define what Yogesh can do and what Yogesh can improve upon. And lastly, I stopped blaming on people, on circumstances, if things don’t go as I wanted.

‘Illeism’, a term I came across when Trump was referring to himself rhetorically in the third person on stage, is the process of referring to oneself in the third person. Though this tends to exhibit personality quirks when spoken out loud, Trump, in his speech, was trying not to be a person but a brand and was trying to objectify himself. Also, illeism, as a trait of a character in a movie or TV-series like Jimmy in Seinfield, is always portrayed as an infantile or narcissistic personality trait. Also, politicians use it for rhetorical purposes.

But when applying this process in self-reflection, you start looking at yourself from outside to inside. While doing this internally with oneself, thinking about things happening and around you in third person provides a larger narrative of your life. You detach yourself from who you are and start looking at the bigger picture more objectively. Let me know your experience when you start the process in the comments.

If you want to read more about this, here is the list of article I referred while researching on this topic.
Research Paper on Reinvestment, task complexity and decision making under pressure in basketball
Research Paper on Being Emotional During Decision Making — Good or Bad? an Empirical Investigation
A New Trial Of An Ancient Rhetorical Trick Finds It Can Make You Wiser