Stop...Pause...Reflect

Yesterday i went to an experimental cinema event, where a whole venue is tuned into a 'secret movie' setting and all of the attendees become part of the setting, engaging with the actors, looking for clues, passwords, characters...and by the end, the movie is screened. i was so impressed by the whole thing. the movie 'A Third Man' was about post war vienna amid black market and police invading the whole of the city which had american french british and russian influences.
In the middle of the post-was vienna setting, my friends and I started our discussion on theatre, cinema and acting. they are taking acting classes and they shared some of the techniques they were learning. an old technique was to start by introspecting and be able to feel one's emotions in order to feel any emotion and be able to act it. a newer technique refutes the latter and stresses on repetition as a means of getting emotions right. and it made me think...is introspection really necessary?
Introspective by nature, i have a need to analyze, explain and understand the big and the small things that happen in my life...it keeps me on top of things, it empowers me at times, it makes me find peace at others, it enrich me and gets me closer to reality. it makes me move forward. but it surely does drain my energy. however, im too scared to side track my feelings, thoughts and emotions. i take it as a sign of denial and weakness.
but through my conversation with my friends, i realized that it might be a sign of immaturity too...that sometimes not introspecting is the right thing to do and the mature way to go about things. the ability to just 'let go', and to let things take their course is the harder way and not the easy way out like i used to think. especially in situations and with people that are not worth all these thoughts and all this time dwelling upon. thoughts are precious. we sometimes spend endless amount of time thinking about crap. training myself to filter my thoughts and choose what to introspect on and not to is the way to go about it i thought...
so my technique is to STOP...PAUSE...REFLECT...stop whenever a thought comes to my mind...pause and assess whether its worth it or its not and evaluate how will me dwelling on that certain thought is going to change things (if any) and then reflect if its really necessary.
most of the times, consciously stopping our chain of thoughts right there prevent so many unneeded negative vibes and frees our thoughts to more useful and productive ones.

furaha xxx