The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all. – Mark Twain
Why Some People Struggle and Others Succeed
Have you ever wondered how some people who start off with very little are able to achieve phenomenal amounts of success in a very short period of time? Or how about people who face tremendous adversity but are suddenly able to turn things around in their favor?
These scenarios are of course not typical. In fact, the vast majority of people who come from nothing continue to have very little in life. Moreover, the great many who face tremendous adversity rarely if ever turn it into an advantage to build a better life for themselves.
Unfortunately, things aren’t easy for most people, and they continue to struggle their entire lives, while others effortlessly and successfully move from one difficulty to another; making the most of every situation that comes their way.
But why are things this way? Why do some people continuously struggle while others overcome tremendous adversity time and again? Well, it might just have something to do with the little talked about mental skill of self-reflection.
The Incredible Value of Self-Reflection
The real reason why many people continue to struggle while others successfully overcome the greatest of odds comes down to the simple act of self-reflection.
Those who struggle simply do not take the time to learn from their experience in order to make the necessary adjustments to improve their results. It’s really as simple as that!
People who have overcome the greatest of odds are the ones who do a tremendous amount of soul-searching. This helps them to put all their experiences into perspective, which further allows them to make better choices and decisions. In other words, they take the time to learn from their experiences, and this helps them adjust their course of action moving forward.
This process of learning comes through the act of self-reflection. Self-reflection is an empowering ritual that allows you to think back on what has been in order to learn valuable lessons that can help you optimize your efforts and skill sets.
Regular periods of self-reflection effectively allow you to:
- Learn from your failures, mistakes, and experiences.
- Clarify your values, priorities, and strengths.
- Release emotional attachment to people, things, and events.
- Make better choices, independent decisions, and new associations.
- Remove inner roadblocks that hold you back from achieving your goals.
- Examine your habitual behavior patterns and intuitive feelings.
- Uncover hidden dreams and aspirations as well as undiscovered potential.
- Gain deeper insights into your thoughts and a vast array of experiences.
- Expand your perspective and understanding of people and situations.
- Better spot potential problems and opportunities in advance.
- Respond calmly and appropriately to challenges that may have otherwise hindered your progress.
And of course, all these benefits in combination help improve your self-confidence and self-esteem, allowing you to get the most from yourself and from your natural abilities in every situation you face.
As a whole, self-reflection provides you with an opportunity to consciously and actively create your life on purpose. What this means is that you no longer respond haphazardly to events, people, and circumstances. No longer are you at the mercy to the world around you, you are instead the captain of your ship, steering it in the direction of your choosing.
The people who continuously struggle to get anywhere in life; who struggle to achieve their desired goals; and who struggle to overcome setbacks and adversity often dig their own graves with blame, shame, guilt, and a plethora of complaints that mask underlying excuses that keep them stuck and unable to move forward. Their insecurities are reflected in their critical voice; within their unhelpful thoughts; through their limiting beliefs, and subsequently gets projected out into the world when they choose to play the victim card.
Instead of taking the time to reflect and learn from their experiences, they are just too caught up in self-pity, and simply unable to break free from this vicious cycle.
If this sounds very much like you then congratulations on recognizing and having the awareness to acknowledge how and where you’re getting stuck. It’s now time to begin turning things around. And of course, this all starts with getting into the regular habit of partaking in the ritual of self-reflection.
Preparing Yourself for Self-Reflection
For self-reflection to become an integral part of your life, it’s critical that you readily understand what’s involved and that you are prepared to make adjustments in how you think about and interact with the world around you.
For starters, self-reflection requires that you value growth above all else. What this means is that you must prioritize self-improvement and personal development over most other values that you hold dear to your heart. This might, of course, require that you undertake the value transformation process, which will help you create a values hierarchy that will allow you live in a more optimal way.
Self-reflection requires that you have a hunger and eagerness to want to improve yourself and improve your life. It requires being willing and able to ask insightful questions about yourself, about life and about the people you interact with. Moreover, self-reflection requires being alert, curious and open to the vast array of possibilities that exist before you. And this, of course, requires also being open to changing your mind and perspective about things that you possibly never before questioned.
Given all this, in order to gain value from the ritual of self-reflection you must be willing to adapt and expand your comfort zone beyond what feels normal and natural because after all, that is the only way we learn and make progress moving forward.
For the most part, self-reflection isn’t easy. It requires effort. Furthermore, it requires that you critically examine your life and yourself including all your faults, weaknesses, insecurities, mistakes and failures. For most people, this form of self-examination is an absolute nightmare and something they will avoid doing at all costs. And this is why these people continuously struggle. They struggle because they are afraid of opening Pandora’s Box. It’s a process that once started brings about many complications that people just don’t want to deal with or for that matter resolve.
Self-reflection requires that you are open and honest with yourself. It requires that you look deep within yourself at all the parts of yourself that are not all that attractive, and could very well be downright ugly. These are the parts of yourself that will lead to a better life as long as you are willing and able to explore them with the intention of gaining valuable growth and self-improvement.
Most people are convinced that they are right most of the time, and when the evidence is stacked against them, they complain, make excuses or throw blame. This kind of attitude will never allow you to gain value from the process of self-reflection. You must instead turn off your victim mentality switch and start taking full responsibility for your life and circumstances. Only in this way will self-reflection help you build the life you seek.
The Process of Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is a process that involves spending some quiet time daily thinking and reflecting upon yourself and upon the events, people and circumstances of your life. It involves looking at your day objectively and asking yourself a series of questions that can help you to better understand what happened, why things happened that way, and what you can learn from these experiences to make more optimal choices tomorrow.
You could, of course, spend your self-reflection time in a variety of ways. You could, for instance, reflect upon your day, upon the choices and decisions that were made, upon your actions, behaviors, values, attitude, and interactions. You could also reflect on your thoughts and the emotions that colored the events of the day. Likewise, self-reflection can be spent thinking about the knowledge you have acquired and about opportunities that have resulted and how they were utilized. Moreover, reflecting on problems, and planning for your future are two other ways you can put this time to good use.
A typical self-reflection session will involve reflecting on the day’s events and circumstances. This, of course, would include assessing how you dealt with or responded to those events, people and/or circumstances, followed by what you have learned and how you plan to use these lessons to make tomorrow better.
It sounds like a very straightforward process. However, there are various layers of self-reflection that you might like to explore during a typical session.
Below you will find a series of questions built around various areas of focus for your time of self-reflection. You can, of course, make use of all or just some of these questions throughout a self-reflection session. What’s important is that you successfully adapt each day’s questions to the daily events that transpired; including the goals and objectives you had in mind. This will, of course, require some practice, but the more times you go through your self-reflection session, the better questions you will typically ask yourself.
Reflections of the Day
How was my day?
What specifically happened?
What was great about today?
What do I appreciate about today?
What do I regret or wish to do over?
Why do I feel this way?
What valuable lessons can I learn from all this?
Reflecting Upon Decisions Made
What specific decisions did I make today?
What intentions did I have when making these decisions?
Why did I make these decisions and not other decisions?
What outcomes did all these decisions lead to?
Where these outcomes favorable or unfavorable? Why? Why not?
What valuable lessons can I learn from all this?
Reflecting Upon Actions and Behaviors
What risks did I take today? Why?
How did all these risks pan out?
Did I give into my fears at any stage of the day? Why?
Did I indulge in any addictions that weren’t to my benefit? Why?
What worked really well for me today? Why?
What didn’t work out so well for me today? Why?
What valuable lessons can I learn from all this?
Reflecting Upon Thought Process
How did I think about things today?
Why did I think this way about these things?
Was this an optimal way to think about these things?
How else could I have thought about these things?
What advantage would there have been to think about things differently than I did?
What valuable lessons can I learn from this?
Reflecting Upon Emotions Experienced
What emotions did I tend to experience throughout the day?
What events, circumstances or people tended to rile up my emotions?
How did I handle my emotional experiences?
Did I handle them in a helpful or hurtful way?
How could I have handled my emotional experiences in a more optimal way?
What valuable lessons can I learn from this?
Reflecting Upon Belief Systems
What do I believe about today?
What do I believe about myself, other people and about the events of the day?
Are all these beliefs valid and justified?
Where am I possibly jumping to conclusions or making assumptions about things?
What empowering beliefs got me through the day?
What limiting beliefs tended to hinder me?
What valuable insights can I gain about myself through my belief systems?
Reflecting Upon Interactions
How did I relate with other people today?
Did any conflicts arise? How did I handle them?
How did I handle criticism and rejection?
How did I express myself to others today?
How effectively did I communicate my needs?
How effectively did I read people’s emotional needs and intentions?
Where could I improve to upgrade how I interact with other people?
Reflecting Upon Personal Attitude
How was my attitude today?
Was my attitude more optimistic or more pessimistic? Why?
What specifically tended to trigger this attitude?
Were these triggers internal or external?
Did I give all that I had today? How? Why not?
Was I nurturing, generous and humble?
What valuable lessons can I learn from all of this?
Reflecting on Problems
How was I challenged today?
How did I respond to these challenges?
What was the outcome?
What exactly did I do that helped me overcome these challenges?
What about the challenges I didn’t overcome?
Did I make any excuses along the way? Why?
Why specifically were these challenges so difficult to overcome today?
What valuable lessons can I learn from dealing with these challenges?
Reflecting on Roles Played
How was I as a parent, sister, teacher, friend, mentor, spouse, leader, teammate, manager, son, etc?
Where did I meet my expectations?
Where did I fail to live up to the standards I hold for myself within each of these roles?
Was my work-life balanced? Why? Why not?
What can I learn from reflecting on all my roles in this way?
Reflecting on Personal Health
Did I look after my body today?
Did I exercise?
Did I eat healthy?
Did I look after my mind?
Where did I let myself down?
Where and how could I improve tomorrow?
Reflecting on Opportunities
What opportunities did I get today?
How did I take advantage of these opportunities?
How did I fail to make full use of these opportunities? Why?
What valuable lessons can I learn from this experience?
Reflecting on Knowledge Gained
What valuable knowledge did I acquire today?
How did I come about this knowledge?
How can I make use of this knowledge to help me tomorrow?
What knowledge am I still missing that could be of value?
How will I go about acquiring that knowledge?
What can I learn from today’s experience of knowledge acquisition?
As you can see there are a wide variety of questions you can potentially ask yourself. The only limits are the limits of your imagination.
What you will find is that the more often you take time for self-reflection the better you will get at asking deeper questions that will help you gather valuable insights and perspectives.
Deep Level Learning and Planning
Let’s now take this process of self-reflection to yet another level.
So far you have spent time reflecting on your day and upon how you interacted with the world on that day. That level of self-reflection is great to start off with, however, to gain real value from this process, we need to take things one step further.
To take this extra step you will need to consider the true value of the lessons you learned from this day as a whole. In other words, you need to now put every area of focus under the magnifying glass and take valuable lessons from these experiences to help you make more optimal choices and decisions tomorrow.
Let’s first consider the events and circumstances of the day and deeply reflect on how things transpired. To help you with this process ask yourself the following questions:
Am I seeing things clearly?
Are things how they are, or could they be somewhat different?
How would other people see these situations?
How else could I potentially view the events, people and circumstances of my day?
How would this alternate perspective shift the way I think about everything?
Let’s also take a look at cause-effect relationships to see if we can identify any patterns. Ask yourself:
What did I specifically do throughout the day?
What was the direct outcome from every choice and decision I made?
Why did this outcome result and not something else?
How did I potentially attract all these events, people and circumstances into my life through my actions, thoughts, words, attitude, standards, and beliefs?
What’s the cause-effect relationship here that I am now seeing?
What can I learn that’s of value here to help me make better future choices?
The final question above sets us up for the learning phase of this process. We have of course been learning all the way through this process, but now let’s ask several questions that will help bring all the lessons learned into full view:
What can I learn and take away from today?
What specifically did I learn about myself today?
What specifically did I learn about my problems and the interactions I had with others?
What specifically did I learn about other people today?
What have other people taught me through their words, attitude, actions and behaviors? What have they taught me indirectly?
How specifically have I grown today?
Why is this level of growth important to me?
Given another chance what would I have done differently?
What would I change or do better than before?
While learning from your experiences, it’s important to set your sites on the future; to plan ahead and prepare yourself for things that are still yet to come. That is after all the only way we are able to make progress. Ask yourself:
How could I live with more purpose and intention tomorrow?
How could I more readily express my core values?
Given what I now know, what potential skills must I learn or upgrade?
What knowledge could it be of value to acquire to help move me forward toward my desired goals and objectives?
How will I go about acquiring this knowledge?
Who could support me along my journey?
How will I acquire that support from others?
What else can I take away from today that I can use to my advantage tomorrow?
Having gone through and answered all these questions gives you a solid platform that can help you make progress tomorrow. No longer are you caught up with making excuses or complaining about your life or circumstances, you are instead being proactive and learning from your experiences in order to make the necessary adjustments to improve your future desired outcomes. All that’s left is to build and nurture a daily habit of self-reflection that will support you for the rest of your life.
Further Guidelines for Self-Reflection
The process of self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with mindfulness and observation. Yes, self-reflection typically takes place after hours, however, this period of reflection is based on the day’s events and circumstances. Hence, the more attuned and mindful you are of what is happening around you throughout the day, the more valuable insights you will gather during your daily self-reflection time.
Of course, self-reflection doesn’t necessarily need to be of a meditative visual nature. You can if you prefer to choose to keep a daily learning journal that allows you to collate your thoughts and feelings about your life. This is advantageous for those who like to look back and reflect upon events that took place weeks and months into the past. It can certainly help put things into perspective as you read over the journal entries you made over a period of several weeks. This is how patterns and cause-effect relationships can come into full view.
Another form of self-reflection comes from other people. Regularly asking other people for their feedback and opinion about you and about the various events and circumstances of your life can provide you with valuable insights that can lead to positive changes.
But no matter what method of self-reflection you choose to partake in, it’s important to develop a regular daily and/or weekly routine. You can, for instance, conduct a short daily self-reflection session of 10 minutes during the evening, and then a longer hourly session over the weekend. No matter the routine you choose, it’s important to stay consistent as that is the only way you will gain value from this process over time.
The Pitfalls of Excessive Self-Reflection
As you get into the habit of partaking in regular self-reflection sessions, you will no doubt find them of incredible value. These sessions will lead to a wide array of solutions that can help improve your life and circumstances in incredible ways. However, as great as the process of self-reflection is, it’s important not to indulge in it excessively.
Excessive indulgence in self-reflection can lead to a form of escapism where you are living more in your mind rather than in the physical world. This can likewise lead to a loss of drive and desire to fulfill your goals and responsibilities.
This typically happens when you effectively satisfy your needs and desires in your mind, which convinces your subconscious that there is nothing left to do or accomplish. It’s kind of a video game mentality where you get so absorbed in playing a video game that the external world has less meaning than the internal world you have created for yourself. As a result, there just isn’t enough motivation for you to take the necessary actions you know you need to take in the real world to bring your goals to fruition.
To avoid falling into this trap, it’s important to use your self-reflection time wisely in ways that help you lay down a path moving forward. In other words, you must use your self-reflection time to not only reflect on the day’s events and the lessons learned but to also piece together a plan of action that will help you improve your life the very next day. But for this to happen, you need to be able to hold yourself accountable for these actions. And if you can’t do this yourself, then hire a life coach, mentor or accountability partner to do this for you.
Every single evening you choose to sit down and reflect on the day’s events you hold in your hands the power to change the course and direction of your life. However, nothing will ever change unless and until you decide that you will no longer stand for how things are.
Only an unwavering commitment toward making proactive changes consistently every single day through self-reflection will help you get unstuck and living your life with more purpose and intention.
Time to Assimilate these Concepts
Did you gain value from this article? Is it important that you know and understand this topic? Would you like to optimize how you think about this topic? Would you like a method for applying these ideas to your life?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I’m confident you will gain tremendous value from using the accompanying IQ Matrix for coaching or self-coaching purposes. This mind map provides you with a quick visual overview of the article you just read. The branches, interlinking ideas, and images model how the brain thinks and processes information. It’s kind of like implanting a thought into your brain – an upgrade of sorts that optimizes how you think about these concepts and ideas. 🙂
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Gain More Knowledge…
Here are some additional links and resources that will help you learn more about this topic:
- 7 Ways Self-Reflection and Introspection Will Give You a Happier Life @ Elite Daily
- 10 Key Questions for Self-Reflection @ Entrepreneur
- 30 Journaling Prompts for Self-Reflection and Self-Discovery @ Psych Central
- Arianna Huffington’s 6 Favorite Books for Self-Reflection @ The Week
- How Gossip Boosts Self-Reflection @ Scientific America
- How Reflection is Critical for Self-Improvement @ Psychology Today
- How to Make Self-Reflection Fun @ Mind Body Green
- Reflecting on Your Inner Self @ Mind Tools
- The Power of Self-Reflection @ Inc.
- The Scaling Pyramid of Self-Reflection @ CNX
- What is Experiential Learning? @ About Health
- When Self-Reflection Proves Self-Destructive for Women @ Forbes
