Wilhelm Wundt originally developed the idea of self-reflection in the late 1800s, which focused on three functions of the mind: thoughts, feelings and images. His work eventually resulted in the development of cognitive psychology.
This post starts by discussing the importance of self-reflection. Then we’ll offer a few simple methods and prompts to start reflecting on our thoughts and feelings right away. We’ll discuss images in a future post about visualisation.
Why Is Self-Reflection Important?
The average person has more than 50,000 thoughts every day. Half of these thoughts are negative, and over 90% are repeated from the day before. If we don’t focus our minds on novelty and positivity, we’ll never grow and develop to our full potential.
Understanding ourselves better allows us to refocus our energies away from the distractions of our fast-changing modern lives. We can instead begin to focus on what truly matters to us, what we want and where we’re going.
In other words, reflection helps us cement our own narrative. We define our personality traits, value and desires. Reflection helps us uncover our path of fulfilment. Reflection also puts things in perspective, allowing us to become more mindful in daily life.
Studies have even shown that reflection boosts productivity. This makes the practice a lot like sharpening an axe before chopping down a tree. It makes the hard work easier.
Work smarter, not harder!
Overall, reflection is a simple activity that makes it much simpler to live our best lives.
How Do You Start Reflecting?
Many people don’t make enough time for reflection. And that might be because they just don’t know where to start. Don’t worry if that applies to you, as we offer a quick start in this post!
Some people have a strict weekly practice. Others might only write the occasional journal post when things get hectic. Still many people don’t make a conscious decision to reflect.
As we’ve already discussed, self-reflection is such a valuable practice. It’s worth trying.
A clear hurdle for people seems to be that they don’t have time for a new practice. After all, we’re already busy with everything going on in our lives. How will we have time to add another regular activity?
The truth is that reflection helps us get to the root of who we are and what we want. Once we have a clear idea of this, it becomes a lot easier to focus on our priorities. That means we actually end up saving time, because we’re better at cutting activities that don’t matter to us.
Additionally, once we’ve cut the things that don’t matter, we can think more clearly about the things that do matter. These are the areas where we’ll actually have a real impact.
Doing less is a Stoic productivity concept that aligns with self-reflection.
Self-Reflection Methods
Elements of self-reflection can be found in all kinds of activities. From meditation and journaling to sitting alone with our thoughts, reflection can take many forms.
The Stoics reflected regularly and developed their morning and evening routines around the practice. In fact, reflection is a key practice of Stoicism.
A clear benefit of the practice is that we can pretty much do it anytime, anywhere. It helps to find silence and have access to pen and paper, but even these are not critical.
This means we can find time to reflect whenever, wherever. Most of us spend time everyday on activities like commuting, waiting in a queue or just scrolling through social media anyway.
We should aim to reflect whenever we find a suitable time.
How Do You Reflect Effectively?
Self-reflection tends to come down to a few key areas. It starts with understanding who we are, where we are and where we want to go.
Reflection also helps us gain a deeper understanding of things on our mind.
Who You Are
We are all individuals. And what we want doesn’t always align with what others want. Or what Hollywood tries to tell us that we want. What we want is unique to us and comes down to our own personal values and desires.
Taking time to reflect on who I am and what matters to me is one of the most important aspects of my reflection practice. It gives me direction and confidence. Self-reflection helped me start this website and make big plans for the future.
Because of this practice, I understand how all my actions align with my overall goals.
Where You Are & Where You Want to go
When we know who we are and what our values are, we can also reflect on our current situation. We can understand where we are right now by asking certain questions.
Where am I right now? What do I do everyday? What matters most in my life?
And compare this with where we want to go.
Where do I want to be? What do I want to do everyday? What do I want most in life?
Reflection helps us understand where we are and what we truly want in life. If there is a mismatch between our current and ideal state, we know we need to change something. If we don’t currently live the life we want, we can start working toward getting there.
This can help us take a more strategic approach to our everyday actions. After all, it’s hard to reach your ideal life if you don’t know what you really want.
Challenging Assumptions
It’s easy to develop assumptions about ourselves based on what we’ve experienced in the past. And if we continue to live by the same assumptions, we will continue to believe them.
It’s important to take time to reflect on the assumptions we have about ourselves. Challenge your assumptions by asking probing questions. For example:
What do I think about myself? Why do I think that? What evidence do I have of that?
Challenging assumptions is especially important when self-limiting beliefs stand in the way of achieving our ideal life. In this sense we can ask ourselves:
What do I really want but have not yet achieved? Why have I not achieved it? Am I waiting for someone else to give me a simple solution? Do I not think I’m capable, or am I just procrastinating?
It’s easy to get carried away with our assumptions of things. The Stoics developed the concept of katalepsis to separate their perception from actual reality.
Without healthy reflection techniques, it becomes harder to distance ourselves from negative thoughts.
Break Things Down
Beyond personal fulfilment, we can also use reflection to gain some mental clarity.
It’s easy to look at ideas as monstrous creations rather than a sum of its parts. When we take time to reflect on the various components of something big, it becomes much easier to manage.
For example, we might have a tendency to overthink our role at work, our biggest goals or a problem we’re facing.
Common questions to break things down include:
What do others expect of me in this role? And what do I expect of myself? Where do I feel stunted, like I don’t have any clear next steps? What things cause me anxiety? What can I do about these individual things?
This is a great place to start focusing on what you can control. By creating a Stoic To Do List, you can prioritise your most important actions and embrace things outside your control.
Breaking it down in this way helps us see things more clearly, as the sum of its parts.
Take Action
Reflection is an on-going practice that’s meant to be actionable. It helps us understand who we are, where we are, what we want and what assumptions we hold. It is also a time to think deeply about things that otherwise inhibit our growth or cause us anxiety.
The ultimate goal of reflection is to improve our lives. Insights from reflection should feed into our daily practice, as we live life to the best of our abilities. We want to take concrete steps towards our goals and personal development.
That’s why it’s worth keeping in mind this practical element as we begin our reflection practice.
Naikan & The Japanese Art of Self-Reflection
Naikan is a Japanese method of structured reflection based on Buddhist meditation and self-reflection. This practice has also been used in mental health counselling, treating addiction and rehabilitating prisoners.
It centres around three questions:
- What have I received from ____?
- What have I given to ____?
- What troubles and difficulties have I caused ____?
These questions are a foundation to reflect on all our relationships, including with our parents, friends, siblings and partners – the list goes on. We can even reflect on ourselves in relation to pets and inanimate objects.
The goal of such reflection is to acquire a more realistic view of our behaviour as well as the give-and-take within each of our relationships.
Consider that we acquire credit by receiving from others, while we contribute debit by giving to others. This line of thinking may make us want to value kindness in a new way.
We tend to focus on the troubles others have caused us. But we usually don’t think as much about how might have caused someone else difficulties. It’s easy to brush it off as “not a big deal” when it isn’t happening to us.
Thinking through somebody else’s perspective helps us understand our actions in a new sense.
Self-Reflective Questions
In this section, we’ve compiled our favourite self-reflective exercises from across the internet.
We can use this section as a complete self-reflection exercise with questions that kickstart reflection and provoke deep thoughts.
Writing down the answers to each of these questions with pen and paper might help structure our thinking and internalise our answers. But we can also find a quiet space just to think it through.
You won’t have time to answer all the questions in one sitting, so just pick a few that stand out to you. And make it a regular habit to come back to this list and answer some other self-reflective questions next time.
Questions to Kickstart Self-reflection
Michael Woronko designed the following 10 questions to kickstart a self-reflection habit.
- Am I using my time wisely?
- Am I taking anything for granted?
- Am I employing a healthy perspective?
- Am I living true to myself?
- Am I waking up in the morning ready to take on the day?
- Am I thinking negative thoughts before I fall asleep?
- Am I putting enough effort into my relationships?
- Am I taking care of myself physically?
- Am I letting matters that are out of my control stress me out?
- Am I achieving the goals that I’ve set for myself?
These questions were originally listed in the article: The Power of Self-Reflection: Ten Questions You Should Ask Yourself
Take your time and think through the questions one at a time. Reflection prefers depth over breadth. Take notes in your journal, or just meditate on each question.
Thought-Provoking Questions
You may choose to go deeper with David William’s list of 30 questions that help us get to know ourselves better.
30 Thought-Provoking Questions
- Who am I really?
- What worries me most about the future?
- If this were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
- What am I really scared of?
- Am I holding on to something I need to let go of?
- If not now, then when?
- What matters most in my life?
- What am I doing about the things that matter most in my life?
- What do I matter?
- Have I done anything lately worth remembering?
- Have I made someone smile today?
- What have I given up on?
- When did I last push the boundaries of my comfort zone?
- If I had to instill one piece of advice in a newborn baby’s mind, what advice would I give?
- What small act of kindness was I once shown that I will never forget?
- How shall I live, knowing I will die?
- What do I need to change about myself?
- Is it more important to love or be loved?
- How many of my friends would I trust with my life?
- Who has had the greatest impact on my life?
- Would I break the law to save a loved one?
- Would I steal to feed a starving child?
- What do I want most in life?
- What is life calling of me?
- Which is worse: failing or never trying?
- If I try to fail, and succeed, which have I done?
- What’s the one thing I’d like others to remember about me at the end of my life?
- Does it really matter what others think about me?
- To what degree have I actually controlled the course my life has taken?
- When it’s all said and done, will I have said more than I’ve done?
These questions were originally listed in the article: 30 Thought-Provoking Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Day
Ask Your Own Questions
In addition to the template questions listed above, we can also define our own custom questions. Questions tailored to us as individuals. The questions can be about your past, present or future and should include aspects of your hopes and dreams.
Consider asking more what questions than why questions. Why questions can highlight our limitations and stir up negative emotions, while what questions help keep us curious and positive about the future.
Try to make your questions as specific as possible. The more detailed your questions and answers are, the more you’ll benefit from digging into your self-reflection.
To get the most out of your self-reflection practice, you’ll want to answer these questions with positive, motivating and insightful answers.
Self-Reflection in a Nutshell
Self-reflection is an important practice that aims to harness two core functions of the mind, our thoughts and feelings. Oftentimes it’s easy to run away with harmful, self-imposed beliefs.
When we take a step back and reflect, we gain a deeper understanding of who we are, what we want and how we can get there. We can even use the practice to get to the root of our anxieties.
We also begin to realise that some of our preconceived notions are simply not true.
The 40 questions outlined in this post, along with the various exercises, make a great starting point for regular self-reflection. It’s not important that you answer all the questions right away. It is much more valuable to simply make self-reflection a habit and continue the practice.
Put things into perspective today with regular self-reflection and Mind & Practice.