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Ni (Introverted Intuition) Speech Example

Below is a transcript of an audio recording by Victoria Chernenko (philosopher and entrepreneur in the field of meta-skills and thinking) on the theme of crisis as a reset point and the development of key mental competencies: intellectual curiosity, distancing, and problematization.

Crisis and the Bifurcation Point

I was just sitting near the Palais Garnier (Grand Opéra) in Paris, listening to a webinar by Lili Kim about the midlife crisis, aging, and various inspiring examples showing that after 40 it is not too late, and in fact, the most active phase begins. If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend the webinar. Especially if you have an inner feeling of despondency, a sense that things aren't working out, and that you need to start something from scratch.

The other day on Instagram, I gave everyone the opportunity to write in with their specific request. In response, I sent back a story. A story with a question that was connected to the person's request. Then, if they replied to it, I provided feedback. It was interesting to see that many of the requests in the question box were precisely about this "resetting"—about having to start something from scratch in a new country, with a new circle of people, in a new profession, without money, and so on. And the ages varied: there were people who were 35, 40-something, and 55-plus. And everywhere, in all of these requests, there was a certain despair about having to start over and what to do about it.

So, a crisis—which we might call a midlife crisis—can actually be applied more broadly here. It is any crisis where, for whatever reason, you face a certain shock. Most often it is triggered by external factors, but it can also be internal. But you are faced with the fact that you are suddenly not who you expected to be, that you didn't arrive at the point you planned to reach, or that life offered something you hadn't counted on, in a negative sense. This is a shock. And people interact with this shock in different ways.

In fact, this is a kind of bifurcation point, where you can turn right or you can turn left (as in the fairy tale, "if you go right, you will lose your horse"). There are only two paths at this crossroads:

Intellectual Curiosity and Rigidity

Through curiosity, on the other hand, a person views a problem as a task they want to solve, right? Such people want to explore the world. They explore a reality that turned out to be different from what they thought it was. Because virtually any crisis involves this: we rediscover ourselves, we rediscover reality, realizing that the principles that used to work, or the way I used to describe life, are not how things actually are. And this moment, this point, this choice is very, very important.

This reminded me of an important point in our human assessment methodology that we use in companies: intellectual curiosity. Does a person have it when they face a difficulty? How do they view this difficulty and how do they choose to interact with it, right? To what extent do they view everything happening as a kind of game, a kind of process that is multifaceted by its very nature, where many things can happen, and they want to follow this path and explore it? And if this curiosity wakes up, that's great. Frankly, it doesn't matter what the age is—35, 45, 55, 65, and so on—this precise inner quality will actually be the defining factor of what happens to the person next.

Interestingly, six months ago I also experienced a crisis. It wasn't an official midlife crisis, but it was also connected to external changes that triggered internal ones. It really felt like I suddenly stopped understanding how reality worked. Before that, I knew, but then I stopped understanding, even though I seemed to be doing the exact same things. I applied the same knowledge and the same actions, but I wasn't getting the results I expected. And there was, indeed, a feeling that everything had to be started from scratch, as if I had to understand the world all over again.

The Benefits of Forgetting and the Mandala Concept

The other day, someone and I were discussing the topic of forgetting and memory. I have a very good photographic memory, which I periodically suffer from, because I can remember details of past events that are completely unnecessary to remember and would be beneficial to forget. I remember them, sometimes replay them in my head, and can become obsessed with minor details that aren't worth it. Meanwhile, there are several people in my circle who forget everything beautifully, even some important things.

So, we asked ChatGPT: "What are the benefits of forgetting?" And one of the interesting hypotheses it gave was that when a person forgets, they get a chance to reassemble their personality, to reassemble those different perspectives on reality they used to hold. And actually, that zero you start from when you begin from scratch isn't painful. You don't remember that you've already built some rigid, solid framework of reality, and therefore you are ready to reassemble it anew. Yes, like the principle of a mandala: you made it, you destroyed it, you can make it again. And there are no worries about it—or they are minimal, because you understand: you'll take it apart again, and then reassemble it from scratch.

In fact, the entire tragedy surrounding things collapsing around us... when something collapses around us, it is tied to this rigidity, to this concept that we established. We built it, then we believed in it, deemed it to be the truth, reinforced it, concreted it in, and then it became unmovable. Then some external event comes along, shatters this construction of ours, and we experience an absolute sense of loss. This is one of the signs that our world has become rigid, unyielding, and it is already difficult for us to change it. At that moment, we perceive the new as a rupture. This is also an indicator that our picture of the world is not continuous. It seems to us that the world is continuous, even though it is discrete, even though it is intermittent. And then we place the crisis or some shock as if it were on the outside. Like, my life was moving along, my sequential life was moving along, I understood things in it, it was linear, continuous—and then boom, something ruptured. And now, in this rupture, it's as if it's on the outside, I exist as if outside of life, outside of the "flow" (in quotation marks), outside of a familiar script.

Yet, if you perceive the world as discrete, and this intermittency, these ruptures, as part of this path, then again, the pain will be much, much less.

Key Competencies — Distance and Problematization

What two competencies are important to develop in oneself? This reminded me of them.

1. The Ability to Distance Oneself

This means creating distance from oneself and from the event, in order to split in two (a kind of preventative, healthy schizophrenia). To stand to the side and look at yourself observing, to look at yourself looking, and to look at the event from the outside as well. That is, knowing how to take this step.

The problem is that when we are in pain or reacting emotionally, stepping outside and drawing back is very difficult because we believe. We believe in the feeling we are experiencing. And of course, the stronger the feeling, the stronger the belief, and the harder it is not to believe it. Because the obviousness, the evidence is so strong, and the proof—here it is, it's inside you, and you are experiencing this physical or psychological pain. And not believing it is very, very difficult. This is a matter of practice. How accustomed are you to stepping back, taking that step backward?

Last year I was in Bali, and there I tried a visceral massage (I think that's what it's called), meaning a massage of the internal organs. And they tortured me for three hours. The masseur plunged his fingers in, pressing on certain points. And at the moment he pressed, especially in certain specific places, it was very painful. He told me to breathe through those moments. And when he pressed and it hurt, I believed that it was his fingers—meaning, his fingers were to blame. But when I kept breathing, kept accepting this pain and staying in it, the pain went away.

And every single time throughout those three hours, it was astonishing. It was interesting to me that I had to start convincing myself all over again. Every time the pain subsided, I had to do this action anew: tell myself that this pain is mine, it is inside me, it is not the fingers. And if the fingers leave now, it doesn't mean the pain inside me will just dissolve somewhere. I need to keep living through it.

And this distance—it doesn't come once and for all. It really is that very practice that must be repeated over and over again, over and over. Just like Mamardashvili said (I don't remember the exact quote), he mentioned that we cannot become free once and for all. We must decide and choose to become free every day, every morning. You wake up, and all over again you have to make yourself free, make yourself responsible, make yourself whatever else you want to be. Then you fall asleep in the evening, and it's all over again the next morning: you have to repeat the whole cycle anew, and it will not stop. This is a practice that must happen again and again, over and over.

And it's virtually the same thing with thinking, right? It's not something you can just memorize or acquire as knowledge; you have to pull yourself out of the swamp by your own hair like Baron Munchausen all over again and form this distance. Tell yourself: "Hey, this pain isn't because of an external event. It is my internal pain. I am going to look at it. I will breathe, I will pass through it, and at the same time stand to the side, as it were". Meaning, I am simultaneously participating in the process and simultaneously observing it.

2. Problematization

Naturally, the next competence after distancing is problematization, which naturally goes hand-in-hand, locked together with distance. This means putting things into question. Questioning the belief, the idea that what I think, the way I see reality (the perspective), is the absolute truth. Putting that into question.

And for this, you need that very distance—in order to even imagine that there could be something else. Just like in the case of my story about pain: at that moment, not believing in this pain 100%, not believing that it is absolute, not believing that this external object is causing it. And the mere fact of having this doubt is already decisive. At that moment, you are not this pain, you are not this idea. You can become a bit freer; you are free from it in a sense.

Conclusion: The Art of Dying and Choosing a Perspective

And then, when you have already stepped back and are looking at it, you can see where its boundaries are, where the boundary of this judgment lies. To what extent am I truly starting from scratch? To what extent is the world really like this? I thought it was one way, and now it's another. Where are the boundaries of this truth?

And in this gap, effectively between our idea and potential ideas, lies this space of inner freedom, where I can maneuver between different perspectives, where I can choose them. By doing so, I remain plastic, without building this rigid construction where it will always hurt if it breaks. In the case of plasticity and moving from one idea to another, there is this movement that guarantees the pain won't be severe. You will be plastic, like water. You will accept these external events, take them into yourself, adjust to them, adapt.

And this is also tied to the idea of knowing how to die—the art of dying. As the thought exists in philosophy, to philosophize is to learn how to die. And this idea, of course, is applicable not only to philosophy. It is also popular in martial arts, where you, as a subject, learn to die to yourself. Ultimately, that very "starting from scratch" that worries so many people is flipped here; a kind of reassessment has been made, and it is perceived as something positive. You reset, you start from zero, you die to your past self, and you are reborn as someone new in some new perspective.

In fact, all that matters is the choice of perspective. How do I look at it?

And zero here can be perceived as a major plus, just as it can be perceived as a major minus.