Introspection And Objects Around You
You are not an individual having independent experiences. You are a part of an interconnected network of humans embedded in the complex framework of society.
Not only do the people but the objects in your vicinity influence your mood, your behavior, your productivity, and your mental state. Let us discuss how they do that.
Shapes and Colors
Every object around you has its own personality—which is related to the color and shape of that object.1
The sharp ones look intimidating, while the round ones look friendly and comforting, squares represent safety and reliability, triangles represent motion and direction.
If you want to know more about the influence of different shapes on human psychology, refer to this article.
Similar to shapes, the colors of objects have their own significance. We all know that they have a direct influence on our emotions, but, surprisingly, they can also enhance the effect of placebos.
For example, red, yellow, and orange pills have a stimulant effect, while blue and green are lead to a tranquilizing effect.
Not only do colors have psychological effects on an individual level, but they have also been used for the collective good of society.
In 2000, the city of Glasgow installed blue street lighting in a few neighborhoods and subsequently reported the anecdotal finding of reduced crime and suicide rates in these areas.
The key takeaway is that shape and color of objects influence your mood and behavior in ways that you cannot even imagine. The same objects in your room that you casually ignore might be making you more depressed.
Objects fill up the world to be half of your reality. Even though we interact with them every time, we never sit and reflect on the objects we spend most of our time with. Let’s do that today!
Introspecting the Material World
Most of the time when our self-help influencers talk about introspection, it is only centered around introspecting the emotional fluctuations caused by other human beings. However, I believe that it falls short to help you analyze your emotional state in its entirety.
The state of environment you are kept in—excluding the human element—has a deep impact on your emotional state at that time. Something that the interior designers will agree with. Their entire work is focused on optimizing the inside of your house to be more psychologically pleasing. Not only do they consider what your eyes experience, but they are also concerned about sensations your nose experiences. This is why the best part of going to a Starbucks is the aromatic smell of coffee floating in the air.
Here’s an interesting snippet—that underlines the importance of introspection of objects around you—from Venkatesh Rao’s super-awesome book Tempo:2
Suppose I believe being calm and relaxed at work is good for me, and that having plants makes me more relaxed. So I keep a plant on my desk as an externalization of my mental model about calmness at work.
Now imagine a successor inherits my desk and potted plant. He has no opinion on plants, and keeps the plant as default decision, watering it occasionally. Despite himself, he finds that he feels calmer and likes the feeling. If he is introspective, he might infer and adopt the same beliefs: being calm and relaxed at work is good for me, and that having plants makes me more relaxed.
Now imagine a successor inherits my desk and potted plant. He has no opinion on plants, and keeps the plant as default decision, watering it occasionally. Despite himself, he finds that he feels calmer and likes the feeling. If he is introspective, he might infer and adopt the same beliefs: being calm and relaxed at work is good for me, and that having plants makes me more relaxed.
With an introspective mind, you can optimize your environment to improve the efficiency and the quality of your work.
Most Important Place in Your Life
You cannot optimize every environment you interact with, but you can start with the ones that you come across most frequently i.e. your room.
Here comes the Jordan Peterson inside of me:
You spend most of your time in your room, by that logic you should consider it to be the most important place in your life. Your room is the physical manifestation of your psychological state—declutter it and your mind will clean up.
You and your room are bound in a closed-loop relationship. You both take feedback from each other and externalize those feedbacks.
This implies that if you’re emotionally disturbed then your room is going to get untidy; also if your room is untidy, it is going to harm your emotional stability. Look around and fix what you can.
and the social context they are kept in.
I highly recommend you to read this book, if you are interested in the metaphysics of mental models.