What is Self-Reflection?
Self-reflection is the habit of intentionally paying attention to your own thoughts, decisions, emotions, and behaviors. It is a way of assessing yourself, judging your ways of working and observing how you study. To put simply “Self-reflection” is the process of studying yourself and your way of dealing with the world.
Personal development experts call it “the forgotten art” and self-reflection is, today, something that very few of us care about it. The self-reflection process aims to dedicate more time to ourselves to know what defines us, what we are made of, what makes us happy and what keeps us away from happiness. Therefore, self-reflection is an opportunity to heal our thoughts, which in many cases we are not aware of how much they can affect us or the degree to which we want them to define us.
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, (New York Times Best-Selling Author)
Self-reflection makes us question our beliefs and what we know, that the questions address another perspective, that is, introspection or self-examination.
Why is self-reflection important?
It is important to note that self-reflection and self-knowledge are two similar but independent processes. Although self-reflection also proposes an interior look, it is characterized by being aware that we are the ones who direct our life and not others. We are the ones who decide where we want to go and how.
Self-reflection is related in a certain way to emotional well-being. This means that through this process we will be the ones who examine that how our emotional balance is. Therefore, to speak of self-reflection is to speak of growth, of the learning process. It is like an opportunity we have, to recognize our emotions, feelings, the positive and negative in us, understanding the weight that each of them has in our day-to-day. And this in a way what gives us is an opportunity to manage our emotions and be more active in relation to the beliefs that we have established in our lives.
Furthermore, self-reflection is an indispensable step in achieving emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is something that takes us wherever we want to go exactly. It helps us get to know each other, build healthy self-esteem, and make the decisions of our desires. But also, thanks to emotional intelligence, we can manage to accept the things that happen to us, learn from our mistakes and look towards a life of well-being.
What can the process of self-reflection be like?
Carrying out our self-reflection process is not something that happens overnight. It takes time, like everything else. In fact, there is no right or wrong way to judge and accept yourself. It is simply about learning to know ourselves and penetrate the depths of our emotions. It is important that we find some time with ourselves to question the things that happen to us, to get a good self-reflection. That’s why; spending time alone can also be beneficial. Here are some of the unexpected benefits of spending time alone.
“Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted “ it is an intimate date with yourself.” Dr. Paul TP Wong
Here we will discover what we can do to practice self-reflection and stop at everything that happens around us.
1. By Practicing Mindfulness you will get closer to yourself:
One of the best ways to get closer to ourselves, to control our emotions, to accept the things that happen to us and to live in the present is to practice meditation. Thanks to the mindfulness meditation technique we will remember that we are mainly emotional beings. Thus, we will come into contact with those intense emotions that we have been experiencing.
We will take a tour of them and the effects they have had on us. Then we will think, we will reflect on our attitude and on what we could improve on, always focusing on ourselves. Therefore, with mindfulness exercises what we do is open our mind, heal it from emotional wounds and be aware of the consequences that what we do can have, both for ourselves and for others.
2. Emotional Awareness Exercise:
The Government of Aragon has defined how important it is to carry out an exercise of emotional awareness to promote self-reflection. So, below we will look at some questions that can help us to achieve this.
Have you suppressed your emotions lately?
Have you had negative thoughts?
How long does an intense emotional state last in you?
Does this emotional discomfort accompany some type of disorder?
Are you able to detect the positive emotions that you have experienced?
Everything that happened to us in our daily lives is due to some reason. The best to cope with them is to put yourself according to the situations and then find out the best way to succeed. Well, something as simple as answering these questions can help you much more than you imagine understanding what you feel in each circumstance of your day-to-day.
How do we take things?
How we can manage what affects us?
If we are proud of it, or there is something we want to change because life is a process of constant learning.
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