This topic explores some self reflective practices we can incorporate into our lives to build self awareness, become more calm and centered and harness our mental and emmotional energy in alignment to our goals. A lot of our ability to change depends on our ability to become more self aware and calm reactive patterns -so that we have and be more intentional in the actions we take.
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What is Self-Reflection
Reflective practices can be used to examine the assumptions we create and increase our awareness of our thought processes and habits formed around them. Through the use of developing critically reflective thought processes we can begin to unravel the hidden meanings behind our interpretations and access truths that can shine a light on aspects of ourselves that will facilitate our transformation.
This develops a philosophy-driven practice where we take responsibility for the realities we create within our lives.
I see reflective practices as acting as a lens we use to make sense of our perceptions of the world. Through growth we can reveal limitations of this perception and areas where we could improve our clarity through applying focus to those aspects of ourselves.
Therefore, growth and self-reflection together provide a means to reveal improvements in our journey towards self-actualisation. This inform us of the progress we make in understanding ourselves and achieving our purpose.
This develops a philosophy-driven practice where we take responsibility for the realities we create within our lives.
I see reflective practices as acting as a lens we use to make sense of our perceptions of the world. Through growth we can reveal limitations of this perception and areas where we could improve our clarity through applying focus to those aspects of ourselves.
Therefore, growth and self-reflection together provide a means to reveal improvements in our journey towards self-actualisation. This inform us of the progress we make in understanding ourselves and achieving our purpose.
Self Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to gauge your emotions, character, and skills correctly. A big part of being self-aware has to do with honesty. If you keep making excuses for your faults, you’re not being honest with yourself, and could signal a lack of self-awareness.
Cultivating self-awareness is essential if you want to improve yourself as a person. Once you know what your flaws are, you can put all your self-discipline into action to tackle them. This in turn should improve your life all around.
Practice Mindfulness: The concept of mindfulness is tangled up with self-awareness in general. When people talk about the modern version of mindfulness, they’re referring to the idea of being aware of your surroundings, thoughts, and feelings. In other words, many try to ignore their thoughts and feelings throughout the day. Modern life is stressful, you may end up ignoring certain aspects of yourself in the hope they will go away on their own. However, this approach seldom works. Cultivating mindfulness, means acknowledging those negative feelings and thoughts, and dealing with them. Some of the benefits of practicing mindfulness are to improve your focus, avoid premature judgements and avoid stress.
Ask for Feedback: In many cases, you’ll have negative personality aspects that only become apparent once they’re pointed out to you. The reverse is also true – you might be knocking the ball out of the park metaphorically yet haven’t stopped to notice how great you’re actually doing. If you’re serious about becoming more self-aware, one of the best things you can do is look to the people surrounding you and ask them for their honest opinions about your character and skills. Often, you’ll get responses you weren’t expecting, which can force you to take a closer look at yourself. Admittedly, asking people for honest feedback will make a lot of them uncomfortable. You need to understand this and not force the issue in those cases. Even if you walk away with only the opinion of a handful of friends, it’s often enough to give you valuable information about the way people see you. Finally, if you want this process to work, you need to remain open to feedback you might not agree with. You’re likely to run into some opinions you don’t like, but if they aren’t subjectively true, there’s no reason for conflict.
Keep a Journal: We’re often prone to pushing past events out of mind so we can better focus on our day-to-day tasks. This is often a positive thing since dwelling on the past can impact our productivity and emotions. However, tracking your feelings (even occasionally) can help give you a better picture of who you are. If you used to keep a journal in the past, we encourage you to dig it out and take a look. For most of us, going through an old journal is an exercise in reflection, as it reminds us of our old thought processes. For starting a new journal, consider adding any significant events in your life and the way you felt about them, how you reacted when a difficult situation came up and how you dealt with any conflicts you encountered with other people. Your journal can be as detailed – or straightforward – as you want. Just make an effort to stick with it and take the time to go through the last few days regularly every week. This ‘recap’ process should give you a great idea of how you’re doing, and help you consider ways you can improve your personal and work life.
Track Your Goals: Setting goals and maintaining them is a fantastic skill to cultivate. Keeping score of your goals can also help you ascertain whether your priorities shift over time. This is key to cultivating self-awareness, as the person you were even a year ago is probably very different from who you are today. If at any point you feel like your long-term goals don’t reflect who you are or what you want anymore, it’s fine to change things up a bit. After all, part of becoming more self-aware is learning how to adapt to change. As for how to track your goals more efficiently, the SMART system is tried and tested. They’re all about setting a finish line you can visualize, so it’s easier to monitor your progress. Motivation is often a big reason for lacking progress, so in these situations it’s probably a good time to review your priorities.
Cultivating self-awareness is essential if you want to improve yourself as a person. Once you know what your flaws are, you can put all your self-discipline into action to tackle them. This in turn should improve your life all around.
Practice Mindfulness: The concept of mindfulness is tangled up with self-awareness in general. When people talk about the modern version of mindfulness, they’re referring to the idea of being aware of your surroundings, thoughts, and feelings. In other words, many try to ignore their thoughts and feelings throughout the day. Modern life is stressful, you may end up ignoring certain aspects of yourself in the hope they will go away on their own. However, this approach seldom works. Cultivating mindfulness, means acknowledging those negative feelings and thoughts, and dealing with them. Some of the benefits of practicing mindfulness are to improve your focus, avoid premature judgements and avoid stress.
Ask for Feedback: In many cases, you’ll have negative personality aspects that only become apparent once they’re pointed out to you. The reverse is also true – you might be knocking the ball out of the park metaphorically yet haven’t stopped to notice how great you’re actually doing. If you’re serious about becoming more self-aware, one of the best things you can do is look to the people surrounding you and ask them for their honest opinions about your character and skills. Often, you’ll get responses you weren’t expecting, which can force you to take a closer look at yourself. Admittedly, asking people for honest feedback will make a lot of them uncomfortable. You need to understand this and not force the issue in those cases. Even if you walk away with only the opinion of a handful of friends, it’s often enough to give you valuable information about the way people see you. Finally, if you want this process to work, you need to remain open to feedback you might not agree with. You’re likely to run into some opinions you don’t like, but if they aren’t subjectively true, there’s no reason for conflict.
Keep a Journal: We’re often prone to pushing past events out of mind so we can better focus on our day-to-day tasks. This is often a positive thing since dwelling on the past can impact our productivity and emotions. However, tracking your feelings (even occasionally) can help give you a better picture of who you are. If you used to keep a journal in the past, we encourage you to dig it out and take a look. For most of us, going through an old journal is an exercise in reflection, as it reminds us of our old thought processes. For starting a new journal, consider adding any significant events in your life and the way you felt about them, how you reacted when a difficult situation came up and how you dealt with any conflicts you encountered with other people. Your journal can be as detailed – or straightforward – as you want. Just make an effort to stick with it and take the time to go through the last few days regularly every week. This ‘recap’ process should give you a great idea of how you’re doing, and help you consider ways you can improve your personal and work life.
Track Your Goals: Setting goals and maintaining them is a fantastic skill to cultivate. Keeping score of your goals can also help you ascertain whether your priorities shift over time. This is key to cultivating self-awareness, as the person you were even a year ago is probably very different from who you are today. If at any point you feel like your long-term goals don’t reflect who you are or what you want anymore, it’s fine to change things up a bit. After all, part of becoming more self-aware is learning how to adapt to change. As for how to track your goals more efficiently, the SMART system is tried and tested. They’re all about setting a finish line you can visualize, so it’s easier to monitor your progress. Motivation is often a big reason for lacking progress, so in these situations it’s probably a good time to review your priorities.
Creativity
Through enhancing our self awareness you can unlock your creative potential.
The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. Thus, we can say creative thinking is the task of recognising relationships between concepts.
The following five steps are key in the creativity process:
Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas. There are three key attributers to creative thinking:
Creativity is often viewed and studied as an end goal of achieving a particular objectives, but in itself can be linked to many other positive outcomes, such as feeling less stressed, happier, more successful, and more satisfied with your work. Rollo May in The Courage to Create also advances the position that creative expression represents a pinnacle of life. Being creative is not easy, May argues; it requires challenging the others’ beliefs and, at times, one’s own beliefs. Creativity also plays a key role in growth oriented towards achieving self-actualisation and be able to achieve your potential.
The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. Thus, we can say creative thinking is the task of recognising relationships between concepts.
The following five steps are key in the creativity process:
- Gathering material: At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on learning specific material directly related to your task and learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.
- Intensely working over the material in your mind: Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.
- Stepping away from the problem: Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.
- Allowing the idea to come back to you naturally: At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.
- Testing your idea in the real world and adjusting it based on feedback: For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.
Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas. There are three key attributers to creative thinking:
- Creative problem solving requires the production of high quality, original, and elegant solutions to complex, novel, ill-defined problems.
- Problem solving requires knowledge or expertise.
- There are patterns in the solutions to problems that are cross-transferable despite differences in knowledge requirements and processes.
Creativity is often viewed and studied as an end goal of achieving a particular objectives, but in itself can be linked to many other positive outcomes, such as feeling less stressed, happier, more successful, and more satisfied with your work. Rollo May in The Courage to Create also advances the position that creative expression represents a pinnacle of life. Being creative is not easy, May argues; it requires challenging the others’ beliefs and, at times, one’s own beliefs. Creativity also plays a key role in growth oriented towards achieving self-actualisation and be able to achieve your potential.
Key Practices
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