Interiority is the condition of being in contact with your lived experience as it unfolds – what you’re sensing, feeling, anticipating, making sense of, and drawn toward or away from, as it’s happening. It’s a state of contact, not something you do. Interiority can be weak or strong, clear or vague – and under pressure you can lose it.
Interiority is different from self-awareness.
One meaning of self-awareness is knowing about yourself – I’m an introvert, I shut down in conflict. This is valuable for preparing for and reflecting on collaboration and conflict moments, especially how you handled yourself in them. But interiority isn’t preparation or reflection – it’s contact with what you’re living as you live it, sometimes before you have words for it. (You can know your patterns well and still lose contact with yourself when one plays out.)
Another meaning comes from Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, where self-awareness explicitly includes recognizing a feeling as it happens. Notice this is a capability which, when done well, puts you in touch with your lived experience as it unfolds.
Similarly, practices like mindfulness, meditation, body scans, and others train you to turn toward your own experience. Interiority is your contact with that experience.
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