Why don’t people self-reflect? Well, it’s kind of funny I get to write about this because I know my younger self would be screaming this question out almost every night in his bedroom while contemplating the behaviors of human beings.
At first it was a sad thing for me because I felt like self-reflection would be the key to solving all of the world’s issues. I found my own healing through self-reflection and it was where I began to have conversations with my subconscious.
But through the years and after having a lot of conversations with people I have a good idea of where this apprehension towards self-reflection comes from. I have listed the following three reasons for why self-reflection isn’t a popular practice with the mainstream culture.
- People don’t know how to do it.
- People’s ego stops them from self-reflection.
- The majority of the population aren’t able to think for themselves.
People Don’t Know How to Self-Reflect
I have realized that self-reflection is something that came very easy to me, just as talking to people is easy to extroverts. There is a fundamental quality about introverts that leads them to be much more inclined towards self-reflection. In fact, that might just be a default state or way of approaching the world. If you look at Jungian typology, Carl Jung talks about the different ways people interact with the world. Some people go to their thoughts first while others follow their emotions. An extroverted person gains energy from engaging with large crowds of people while an introvert feels much better in a more intimate setting.
So, this could be a hint to the question as to why people don’t do it a lot. It’s because self-reflection is a skill, and although people might have a proclivity towards it, just like any skill, it can be broken down and developed. For example, with me, although I did have the tendency to self-reflect, I want people to know that everyone can self-reflect. Just like I developed the skill of being extroverted, those who aren’t used to introspection can benefit from such a practice and can actually get quite good at it.
The Ego is Afraid of Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is a test of humility. Only those willing to look at themselves and take responsibility for the ugliest parts of themselves are able to receive the riches found within Truth.
Truth is meant to destroy our egos. It’s meant to break our current concept of reality and make it larger. The only thing is that with each expansion of our reality there is a death that the ego has to face. It needs to acknowledge where it might have been wrong and take responsibility for its ignorance by letting go of itself. The ego has to die in order for a new one to come in.
The thing is though, that the ego is the ego, and its main goal is self-preservation. Our egos do not want to die. There are few reasons why:
- The ego is inherently selfish
- The ego is what gives us our identity and allows us to navigate the world with a strong sense of self. So, an ego will do whatever is possible for it to uphold itself, and you can see this in the people with huge egos – they are never wrong and refuse to see a reality in which they could be wrong.
- Our ego serves as a psychological safeguard.
- An ego is essential to our sense of reality, time, and identity. If we have our egos take a massive hit, like the complete dissolution of itself, it can spell danger for those who do not have a mind capable of withstanding such a break from reality. Many people often struggle with coming to grips from an ego death, there is sometimes a sense of numbness, where the person does not know what is real or struggles to reconnect with physical reality.
So, looking at these reasons one can start gaining a deeper understanding and have some compassion for the people who refuse to look at themselves. I often would get emotional about this and would get mad at the fact that people wouldn’t self-reflect but there are a lot of subconscious things going on that stop them from getting to that place of true introspection.
And so, I want to list the last reason people do not self-reflect:
99% of the Population Can’t Think for Themselves
I think that this is an accumulation of both of the reasons that were listed before but this is stated more so to give attention to the fact that self-reflection requires a lot of self-development in order to use it correctly. The majority of people are driven by the herd mentality. People are mainly guided by things they hear, and our identity isn’t truly a self, but an accumulation of beliefs, thoughts, and opinions that many people say we are. When we self-reflect, we come into contact with the true self within us. But getting to that place requires a comfortability with the voice within us.
To explain this a bit further, we all have a self within us. This self speaks to us through our intuition and can sometimes be seen as our conscious. This is the voice that knows who we are and points us in the direction of our purpose. But as time passes and we get assimilated into the culture, we start to seek acceptance and approval from the outside world. We listen to the noise outside of us a lot more than we do the quiet voice within us. The noise of a thousand voices drowns out the sound of our innervoice the one voice that matters. Then, we create a barrier and block that voice. Getting to that voice then requires a breaking away from the herb mentality and is the process known as individuation.
Carl Jung, the man who came up with the term – individuation – has made it an explicit fact that individuation is not easy. The majority of the population still have a lot to work on when it comes to developing their psyche to the point of individuation.
So, in writing this, I hope it saves a lot of heartache and despair from a lot of the people along the spiritual journey. Yes, it is difficult, but you are not alone in your progression towards your true self. Know that when looking at others and wanting to help them realize the truth, the best thing you can do is create your boundaries and follow your intuition. When you are growing and isolating yourself, you have to really go deeper into it so you can come out and bring that new self to the world. This new self will have compassion for those who choose to not work on themselves and will know which ones are worth putting time into and which ones aren’t.