Self-reflection is an intentional introspective process whereby you look into yourself to assess the current state of your life. It’s a very empowering process that allows you to honestly reflect on your fears, worries and weaknesses holding you back and also, importantly, on your strengths, wins and talents to function at your optimal level to become your best version.
Self-reflection is centred on the development of self-awareness, also called Introspection. Writing down your thoughts might help you understand why you’re feeling a specific way and make it simpler to handle those emotions. Self-reflection also enables you to recognise the journey you’ve been on up to the present moment. Looking back at what you’ve written over weeks, months, or years later can demonstrate that you were able to overcome the obstacles you faced in the past.
“The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination. Until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.”~ Iyanla Vanzant
Self-reflection is gaining a deeper understanding of who you are, your values, and why you think and behave as you do. It is a personal analysis that enables you to make your life in line with your desires.
Anybody can and should practice self-reflection regularly. It is, however, an art that needs to be mastered to be effective. Mastering the art of self-reflection requires understanding WHEN, WHERE and HOW it should be practised, and it’s so simple that you’ll be surprised!
Here are the basics you need to become competent at this amazingly powerful practice of Self-reflection:
WHEN
It’s totally up to you how you the duration of how long you want to do it and what suitable time. Some people prefer to do their reflection right before bed, while others prefer first thing in the morning. The key is to schedule time for self-reflection as you would an important appointment. This will help make it a relevant part of your lifestyle and, over time, a permanent habit. While the hours are totally up to you, how often is also up to you based on four options.
Daily: You can choose to do a short daily reflection of 5-10 minutes to review your priorities and analyse what went well, what didn’t and why. You reflect on specific issues and how you handled them, as well as any lessons learnt.
Weekly: Weekly self-reflection would involve reviewing your weekly goals and whether you met them and, if not, identifying the reason for that. You reflect on the positive highlights of the week and what you did well. You also reflect on negative situations and how you can avoid them in the future to move forward.
Weekly reflections should also include your relationships, your health and what you can do more or less to foster these areas.
Monthly: Monthly reflections typically take longer (within an hour) and involve a full assessment of where you are currently at in your life. These includes:
- How well you’re achieving your goals
- Obstacles holding you back from achieving your goals
- Issues in your personal and professional relationships and ways to address them
- Your personal growth and what new things you’ve learnt
- Specific achievements that you’re proud of
- Your overall physical and mental wellbeing
This is also a good time to set or modify goals for the coming month and identify weaknesses you need to address and strengths to foster your progress.
Yearly: Yearly self-reflection should be practised in addition to your choice of daily, weekly or monthly consideration. This involves an overall evaluation of all areas of your life over the past year. It includes going over the same points as in the monthly reflection in more depth and what you had set out at the beginning of the year. One of the best tools to help you is to keep a journal (Reflective Journal).
This is useful for your yearly reflection to jot down key observations and areas to improve upon throughout the year. When the time comes for your annual reflection, then you’ll be able to know what to work on for the coming year.
WHERE
Self-reflection can be practised anywhere that’s quiet and comfortable and where you can think deeply without distractions. You don’t need to designate a fixed spot if you think it will feel like a routine and monotonous.
You can carry it out indoors, in a quiet space or even lying in bed. You can do it outdoors in your garden or while nature walking, cycling or sitting in a quiet park. The beauty of nature is very conducive to deep thought and concentration. Naturally, you can alternate between indoor and outdoor self-reflection and do it somewhere different each time or stick to one place. Whatever works best for you, do it!
HOW
The right way to practice self-reflection is to contemplate the state of your life with total honesty and neutrality. Ruminating on how unlucky you are or angrily blaming others – or yourself – isn’t self-reflection. It’s just useless ranting that isn’t going to help you find any solution. The goal of self-reflection is to objectively assess what’s going right and what’s not and find ways to constantly improve and be your best possible self.
Make sure your reflection is beneficial by using the following steps to guide you:
** Ask pertinent questions
“Why does life suck?” isn’t a pertinent question. A pertinent question is precise and gives you a chance to solve the problem at hand! Here are some examples:
** How can I communicate better with my partner?
** What two new skills can I learn to help me advance in my career?
** What was my biggest achievement last week/ month?
** What was my biggest setback last week/ month?
** What issues am I avoiding that could be holding me back?
** What are my current weaknesses/ flaws?
Create your questions along these lines so that you search for relevant and beneficial answers:
– Organise priorities
Take the time to identify and find your current priorities, especially if they’re related to your goals. Priorities may change due to unexpected situations and crises, so ensure you’re addressing them quickly and efficiently to get back on track.
– Reflect on your career
If your career is important to you, contemplate what you need to do to keep advancing. Identify obstacles and plan effective actions to help you overcome them. It helps to contemplate your professional relationships as well and how you can foster these for more growth and success.
– Reflect on your personal relationships
Reflect on how healthy your personal relationships are. What flaws can you fix to improve your relationship, marriage or family and friends’ connections? What can you be doing more to improve communication? More importantly, reflect on whether there are relationships you’d be better off ending, such as negative, abusive or over-demanding relationships.
– Reflect on your health
You can never do enough to stay healthy and fit. You know yourself better, so assess your health by looking at your diet, exercise routine, if any and overall lifestyle and note what’s right and what’s wrong. Living a healthy,y active lifestyle allows you to bring joy and happiness into your life. So, find the most affordable ways to look after your health. Hire a coach or a therapist if you need to but do something if you feel you need to change something.
– Practice gratitude
Always end your self-reflection by making a mental list of all you have to be grateful for. It’s a great way to boost your mood and keep yourself optimistic and motivated to be more. An attitude of gratitude has been found to have many benefits in your life, including your overall health.
“A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us.It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?” If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time – the stuff of life.” ~Carl Sandburg
Self-reflection, as mentioned above, is a powerful tool that keeps us on track toward achieving our goals. Still, it also has some powerful benefits that can’t be left without mentioning, and I hope they encourage you to make this a habitual practice. Below are the top Benefits of Self-reflection:
1. It fosters self-improvement
Reflecting on recent setbacks makes you aware of your shortcomings and weaknesses. It helps you identify where you need to grow and improve to avoid future setbacks and mistakes.
With self-reflection, you’re always asking questions such as: “What new things have I learnt recently? What can I do to improve in this area? What flaws or shortcomings are holding me back?”
Answering these questions will make you more aware of the specific areas where you need to grow and improve.
2. It strengthens relationships
Self-reflection helps you recognise what’s right in your relationships but, more importantly, highlights specific issues that you need to work on. You become aware of things you may be doing that harm or limit relationships. You can therefore act to consistently improve and foster the relationships that you value.
3. It brings you clarity
Reflecting on various areas of your life with calm objectivity brings you amazing clarity. You see the big picture of your life, where you currently are and where you need to go next.
4. It helps you know your values and adhere to them
Self-reflection makes you aware of how far you’re willing to go to achieve your goals, but also where you draw the line. In other words, where you’re not going to compromise on your values and sell yourself out. You find ways to navigate hurdles and obstacles while staying true to yourself, making success much sweeter and more satisfying.
5. It helps you confront your fears
Often, we delay making important decisions or taking action because we fear risk or failure. Self-reflection helps you confront your fears by reframing them. This means identifying options that will result in great outcomes by mitigating or eliminating risk and failure.
6. It challenges your thinking
Self-reflection encourages you to ask questions about why something happened and why you’re struggling with certain issues. You then think deeply and critically to find effective ways to deal with issues and overcome obstacles. You’ll be surprised to find yourself coming up with very innovative solutions!
7. It helps you accept change
Regular self-reflection makes you aware that change is inevitable. You reflect on how many times a sudden change threw you off track. You contemplate the times you resisted change because it made you feel insecure. Finally, you make the realisation that change is inevitable. Just being mentally prepared for change is a very powerful mindset in itself. Over time, you become more resilient and able to adapt to change quickly and proactively.
8. It makes you grateful
As you become more self-aware, you also know how much you take for granted. You reflect on your blessings and the wonderful people you have in your life and realise that despite life’s ups and downs, you are blessed with so much abundance. Gratitude develops naturally as you practice self-reflection, and it has a very positive impact on your overall well-being. It creates a wonderful loop of positivity and hope that keeps you motivated and resilient in even the toughest times.
9. It reduces stress
With increased clarity and focus, you can stay on track with your goals and resolve issues before they escalate. Naturally, this makes your life run much more smoothly and manageable. Your worries and fears decrease because you’re more adaptable to change and enjoy the blessing yay comes with gratitude. It’s a no-brainer that this will boost your overall physical and mental well-being and dramatically relieve stress levels.
10. It boosts self-confidence
All of the benefits of self-reflection will combine to continuously grow your self-confidence. This is because you experience the feeling of being in control of your life. You know that all the answers you need are inside of you and that you can harness your talents and unique qualities to bounce back from setbacks and be the best you can be every day.
IN CLOSING…
Self-reflection is an art because it’s highly personalised. You know best what questions you need to ask yourself and what issues you need to address to make your life journey the most successful and fulfilling. Mastering this skill of Self-reflection, Self-awareness or Introspection takes nothing more than observing the simple rules presented here. So, start your self-mastery today and find the answers you need inside of you. These answers could be life-changing.
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