Reflection is one of the most fundamental skills of successful people.
“Reflection enables us to evaluate experience, learn from mistakes, repeat successes, revise and plan.” – Sherry Swain
Reflection helps us determine if:
- our actions are progressing towards our goals
- we are progressing at the right speed
- our goals are still relevant
Reflection also helps us:
- understand the challenges we faced and what to learn from it.
- identify more effective or efficient methods to achieve our goal.
Research states that there are many reasons why we should reflect. Reflection improves our understanding of ourselves and our emotions. It increases your productivity and reduces our stress levels. It provides us with a strong sense of purpose and achievement. Finally, reflection motivates and focus us through hard times.
Successful people spend about 15 to 30 minutes daily thinking about their careers, personal relationships, or health. This helps to reduce stress, relax your body and brain, find areas to improve and see things you can be proud of.
As children of God, we constantly need to reflect on our lives, are we living according to the will of God?
Lamentation 3:40 (MSG) Let’s take a good look at the way we’re living and reorder our lives under God.
Psalm 26:2 (NIV) Test me, LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.
Psalm 139:3 (NLT) You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.
Job 13:23 (NIV) How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Show me my offence and my sin.
2 Corinthians 13:5 (KJV) Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Galatians 6:3-4 (NIV) If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,
“A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?’ . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time—the stuff of life.” ― Carl Sandburg
I conclude with: “People who have had little self-reflection live life in a huge reality blind-spot.” ― Bryant McGill,