By Jacob de Figueiredo

Introspective Learning.

The power of introspective learning, self reflection and delving deep inside yourself to find out who you actually are as a person, what you stand for and how you can bring yourself to your work are subjects that are frequently brought up during our learning process. 

Luckily for me, they’ve always been concepts that I’ve been captivated by even before I joined the school. Trying to figure out who I am and what my true purpose on earth is, is something that I’d constantly think about during my day to day life. I’m pretty sure it was because I had a disgusting amount of free time and most peoples minds drift towards those questions if not stimulated enough. 

I’ve always found it so powerful and in the past would try a lot of shall we say risky methods in order to try and figure out who I am and answer the introspective questions that would plague my mind. 

I mean, most of my friends and family just thought this was just ridiculous and wasn’t beneficial for anyone. So coming to a school which actively practices introspective learning was an amazing feeling. It’s funny, as the work load increases and my weeks became more and more familiar, my usually practice of trying to answer life’s big questions whilst lost in some unproductive daydream are pretty much nonexistent. 

Which is kinda ironic considering that’s now actually apart of our learning. I think it’s gotta be something to do with the fact that I now feel guilty if i’m not thinking about whatever brand brief I’ve been set that week. Seriously, I must think about brands from the second I wake up to the second I go to sleep and I’m not sure how healthy that can be. 

We had an amazing human come into our school last week, a guy called Jonathan Macdonald. He was a classic case of someone who comes in and within a single fell swoop, completely changes my thinking and makes me question what I’m even doing, constantly thinking about brands. He had an incredible mind, full to the brim with knowledge. Pretty much ever other sentence was some incredibly profound insight making me question the world we life in. 

Nearing the end of the talk, him and Marc got into a discussion about the importance of meditation. Now meditation is something I’ve always been fascinated with, but for some reason there’s another side of me that just can’t seem to accept it into my life. So I tried to find out if there is any actual scientific power behind meditation. 

And it’s pretty incredible. As someone who suffers from anxiety pretty intensely from time to time, it seem ridiculous that i’m still yet to accept this into my life. 

It’s the one part of my process that I think’s missing. Next week and for the foreseeable future is finally the time to actively practice introspective learning, because once I find out who I am and what I stand for, the rest of it comes easy.