How to Reflect On Life
I highly recommend that, if you haven’t yet, you develop the daily habit of reflection, in your own way. It could have profound changes on your life.
Here are but a few:
1. It helps you learn from your mistakes. If we don’t reflect on our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them and that’s not very smart. However, if we reflect on those mistakes, figure out what went wrong, see how we can prevent them in the future, we can use our mistakes to get better. Mistakes, then, are a valuable learning tool, instead of something to feel embarrassed or upset about. Reflection is an important way to do that.
2. It makes you happier. If you reflect on the things you did right, on your successes, that allows you to celebrate every little success. It allows you to realize how much you’ve done right, the good things you’ve done in your life. Without reflection, it’s too easy to forget these things, and focus instead on our failures.
3. It gives you perspective. Often we are caught up in the troubles or busy-ness of our daily lives. A mistake or a high-pressure project or something like that can seem like it means all the world. It can overwhelm us sometimes. But if we take a minute to step back, and reflect on these problems, and how in the grand scheme of things they don’t mean all that much, it can calm us down and lower our stress levels. We gain perspective, and that’s a good thing.
How to Make Reflection a Daily Habit
If reflection isn’t something you feel you do enough, consider making it a habit. Here are some suggestions for doing that:
1. Start a one-sentence journal. Basically, it’s the easy way to start the beautiful famous journaling habit. If you’ve tried and failed at journaling in the past, try the one-sentence journal. It’s a habit that you’ll love, especially when you look back on a year’s worth of entries.
2. Focus on doing it at the same time, every day. No exceptions. Even if you don’t start a one-sentence journal, get into the reflection habit by taking just a few minutes at the end of every day to reflect on your day. Journaling helps crystallize those reflections. Write down your goal: what you’ll do, when you’ll do it, and where. Then focus on doing it every single day, same time, same place, no exceptions whatsoever.
3. Think about your day, your work, your life. In that order. I like to take a look back on my day, to think about what I did right and wrong, what could be improved. Then I take a look at my work, to see how things are going there. Then I step even further back and take a look at my life as a whole. It’s a three-step system that leads to a lot of improvement over time.
