Welcome to Wisdom & Sol! If you haven’t subscribed, join our community of 95,000 intelligent, curious folks who want to boost their emotional well-being by subscribing here.

Subscribe

Pop quiz: What’s the main goal of introspection?

If you said it’s to lead you to action, you’re correct!

But so many of us don’t get introspection right. Most of the time, when we’re looking inward, we dwell on all the things we did wrong. And then do nothing about it. And that’s the part we need to change.

An insight without action is just mental clutter.

Without an action plan, introspection slowly becomes something psychologist Ethan Kross calls chatter: a repetition of the same negative thoughts, with your attention zoomed in so tightly on the problem that you forget to zoom out.

I imagine it like a court case. You’re reviewing evidence you’ve already seen, cross-examining yourself (at weird hours, like 1 am), and calling the same witness again and again.

In real life, a trial normally ends with a clear verdict and action.

Here are three tips to help you make your own introspection after-plan:

❝

1. Take a purposeful pause

When we’re stuck, our survival instincts drive us to think harder. When we’re stuck, our survival instincts drive us to think harder. But that isn’t always easy, especially if you have a lot of things going on in your life. What you need to do is take a moment to stop thinking about everything.

Don’t confuse this with meditation. Rather than sitting up straight, closing your eyes, and breathing in a particular way, I’m talking about something simpler: Spend five or ten minutes doing nothing at all. Sit by a window, take a shower, or walk slowly outside. You could look at what’s around you—a tree, the light on a wall—or listen to sounds you may hear in the background. (Just don’t look at your phone. That doesn't count.)

The Dutch call this niksen, which means doing nothing on purpose.

It helps to keep your eyes open and your attention outside of your head. If a thought about your problem shows up, let it pass. It isn’t your job to think about it right now. If it keeps coming back, get up and do something else.

It might not make sense, but slowing down sometimes solves half the problem. You often come back to your issue with a clearer head, and a smaller-seeming problem than the one you left.

❝

2. Reach a verdict, not a life sentence

Once you’ve paused, give yourself a one-line verdict: “____ could have gone better. ____ is what went wrong.”

That’s all you need to determine. You don’t need to do a full postmortem, and you’re not required to replay every moment.

Notice what your verdict is about: what you did, not who you are. That difference matters more than it looks.

Our mental chatter almost always drifts towards shame. It never stops at “you handled that meeting badly.” It moves on to “You always do this” and “What's wrong with you?”

So keep your verdict small and specific. If you’re upset about talking over someone in a work meeting, telling yourself “I spoke over my colleague in the meeting” is a sufficient verdict.

❝

3. Act on it, then move on

This is the step that matters most: Take action.

Don’t wait until you feel ready, and don’t think it through one more time. Overthinking always finds a good reason to wait. The longer you sit with the plan, the more it slides back into rumination.

So keep it simple. Ask yourself what one thing you can do to make the situation better, and pick something small enough to do this week. If you spoke over a colleague in a meeting, that might mean sending them a quick message, or waiting your turn in the next one. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be done.

Then move on. Don’t go back to check whether you did it well enough, or whether you’ve thought about it enough. You’ve done your part. Your mind lets go far more easily once something has actually changed.

Do it, and let that be the end of it.

Were you forwarded this email? Click here to subscribe for free.

❝

Help us make this newsletter even better for you! Was this issue useful? What would you be excited to read about next? Reply to this email with your thoughts and suggestions. We read every response!