Self-reflection

The Skill for an autonomous Life

What Is Self-Reflection?

Self-reflection describes the process and ability to evaluate your own cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes. When we practice this on a regular basis, we learn more about ourselves and about our relationships with others.

Self-reflection includes both self-observation and self-criticism - i.e. critically questioning one's own cognition and resulting behavior. For some people self-reflection is very easy, but others have more difficulties to access this ability. As a healthy person though, the ability to self-reflect can be trained.

Why Is Self-reflection important?

Living in today's western society, we often tend towards turning our attention to the outside, not properly noticing or being aware of our inner self. We are constantly interacting with other people, spend a lot of time on social media, watch Netflix and don't have enough time for ourselves. But exactly because we are constantly bombarded with external stimuli, it is super important to actually do take the time to become more aware and have a look at what is going on inside of us. Through self-reflection, we get to know ourselves better and instead of automatically reacting to external influences, we learn to become and act more conscious.

Self-reflection isn't always fun, it can become very uncomfortable at times. Maybe you detect reoccurring, automatic patterns within you or maybe you realize that you often end up in similar, difficult situations? This is exactly where you shouldn't let go, but where you have the possibility to learn even more about yourself and have a look into your "dark corners". Because this is, most of the time, where you have the biggest potential to further develop! But, similar to all areas of our life, balance is key! Taking self-reflection and therefore self-optimiziation to the extreme is not what this is about, as it will only make you sick and unhappy.

But in case you want to make a healthy habit out of self-reflection, it will have a positive impact on you and your environment. You will learn how to:

• benefit from past experiences to actively shape your future

• make conscious decisions

• live at peace with your own needs

• better deal with conflicts

• utilize your strengths and energy

• strengthen your confidence

How do you manage to integrate a Healthy habit of Self-reflection into your daily life?

In a regular and moderate frequency, a certain set of questions and exercises will help you to become more aware of your own self and to shift your attention from the outside to the inside. These are a couple of tools that can help you:

Strengthening your awareness through mindfulness and meditation techniques

It doesn't need to be a 1 hour mediation on the hard floor, but 5-10 minutes a day, during which you are completely aware of what you are seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling and craving, are already enough. There are so many online tools, videos and audio guides available online, but these are some of my favorites: Headspace, Meditation with Sinah Diepold on Spotify and my all time favorite: a silent meal, all by myself. Without any input, no conversations, no Netflix, no phone. I simply concentrate on my food. What can I see, what do I taste, what do I feel? This is really a super simple form of mindfulness, that anyone can easily integrate into their daily routine.

The Awareness Wheel

As human beings, we perceive a certain situation with our senses (seeing, hearing, smelling,...). Our brain interprets these perceptions (thoughts) and we develop feelings like anger, happiness, sadness, anxiety etc. Out of these emotions, we develop concrete “wants”, meaning intentions of what we want, most of the time, resulting in actions and behaviors. These and their consequences can again be perceived by our senses and the whole game starts from zero.

The awareness wheel is an easy tool and can be very helpful to recall in some situations to do a quick self-assessment: what processes am I going through? Especially during conflict situations, the model can help you to get more clarity and support you in your ability to self-reflect.

Creating Routines

Yes, it is true. When we create routines, certain activities become a fixed part of our daily life. This is true for creating a training routine, for a healthy diet, for drinking enough water during the day and also for making self-reflection a routine.

An easy way to start this: Take 10 minutes every Sunday to think about the following reflection questions and write down your thoughts:

• What did I learn this week?

• What do I want to do differently next week?

• On a scale from 1-10: How happy was I this week and why?

• On a scale from 1-10: How well did I manage to pay attention to my needs and act accordingly? And what can I do differently next week?
  

Of course it is super individual where you want your reflection focus to lie. It could for example be, that you started a new job or role as a leaser and in this scenario it might be helpful to ask yourself the questions out of exactly this perspective:

• What did I learn this week in my new role as XXX?

• What do I want to do differently next week in my new role as XXX?

• On a scale from 1-10: How happy was I this week in my new role as XXX and why?

• On a scale from 1-10: In my new role as XXX, how well did I manage to pay attention to my needs and act accordingly? And what can I do differently next week?
  

Tip: Book an appointment with yourself in your calendar, to help you practice your new self-reflection routine in a structured way.

Start a Coaching Process

During a coaching process, we use different tools and techniques to practice your ability to self-reflect, we have a look at your "dark corners" where a lot of potential for further development lies and you will for sure have some "aha" moments, learning more about yourself as a person. In case you want to start a coaching process, you can simply book a short session with me, so we can get to know each other. I look forward to working with you!

Self-reflection will never be "done", it is a constant process that leads to more self-knowledge. The better we know and understand ourselves, the better we are able to live an autonomous life, during which we actively shape the way we live. This is true for the personal context, but also for the business context.