8 Importance of self-reflection
Self-reflection is a process whereby you take time out to think, assess, observe, analyze and evaluate your thoughts, action, and behaviors to enable you to grow and create the best version of yourself. Furthermore, it helps you understand the reasons behind your decisions for you to make better ones in the future.
When you self-reflect, you are basically thinking about yourself, your past mistakes and victories, and various trends from your past. It helps you understand yourself, your values, and why you think and act the way you do (that is how you are wired). Personal reflection allows you to analyze your life from a macro and a micro level. It is a very essential tool for self-improvement.
Constant self-evaluation helps you analyze your behavior and goals. It helps you recognize the difference between your goal and your current state. A knowledge of this difference incites a feeling within you that triggers you to be a better version of yourself.
importance of self reflection
1. To observe various changes & track progress:
It allows you to think about the good, what you’ve already done in your life, your achievements, successes, the goals you set as well as the bad and the failures. Actually, it is when we reflect on our past experiences that we can learn from them. Taking time to reflect on your mistakes, enables you to turn most of the failures into successes when given another opportunity to.
2. Allows us to set achievable goals for ourselves:
Setting time out to self-reflect helps you set both short-term and long-term goals that are achievable and also measure your progress. It’s usually a time to write down your goals, expectations, assess your mental health, visualize where you want to be, and plan the process to getting there. After these targets are set, you review them once in a while to ensure you are still on track. As you reflect, create new goals for the upcoming month.
3. Helps to improve our mental health:
Introspection or looking within can change the way we see things which can make it easier for us to cope with life’s challenges. It is related to our successes and failures in life. It gives you the ability to know yourself better in terms of your strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. You can create achievable goals and pursue the opportunities that best fit your skillset. You can strive for things that will give you true happiness and joy.
4. Self-reflection is important for personal growth:
During the period of self-reflection, we recognize where we came from and where we currently are. This helps us recognize the changes in our lives and embrace them. It makes us conscious of the happenings around us and enables us to adjust effectively. It helps keep our emotions in check and assists us in choosing healthier responses and changing behaviors that are not working for us.
5. It helps in the path to self-realization:
Self-reflection allows you to see and embrace who you are and realize your purpose of existence. It allows you to spend quality time with yourself. This is required for personal growth. During this period, you have to mute the external voices. It helps you discover what your energy levels are, your health status, your passions, everything. Knowing yourself helps you build self-confidence and gives you a sense of calmness while you face your daily challenges.
6. It gives us reasons to be grateful for all our achievement and growth:
When you self-reflect, you reflect on the good things, bad things, opportunities, blessings, and testimonies in your life. This will help you see reasons why you should be grateful. It takes your mind away from the problems and challenges and focuses it on the blessings and achievements. This will encourage you to be less worried or anxious, and be more confident in the fact that anything is achievable and you feel content.
7. It enables self-acceptance
It allows us to look neutrally at our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions. Through this practice, we can look at ourselves with interest and curiosity. We begin to dig deeper, to question our very being: why do I feel this way?
8. It encourages self-awareness:
This is a very important constituent of emotional intelligence. It helps us understand people better. Reflection can also enable you to think creatively, improve your mental capacity, and encourages active engagement in work processes.
How to Self-Reflect
Here are some tips to guide you:
- Take some time off (set a scheduled time to self reflect): Taking out about 10-15 minutes a day is enough time to help you unplug and enable you to focus on yourself.
- Highlight your progress (Write about them)
- Choose a method that works for you: We are all unique and we could self reflect differently. Walking, running, meditation, relaxing on a chair, exercising, and writing are some good examples of ways to self-reflect they can help you keep your clear mind.
- Take note of what you have noticed and seen.
- Let your inner thoughts guide you
- Perform breathing exercises
- Evaluate the things you are grateful for
- Take a note of some steps you need to take moving forward. Try to adjust, change or improve anywhere necessary.
- Get supportive friends that will help you.
