Levelling your life through Reflection
Exploring what life has to offer through the often-overlooked experiences presented to us.
Have you ever taken a moment to reflect on your past experiences, rather than consider them as nostalgic memories?
Rooted inside these experiences possess meaning and value that can shape your actions and behaviour in the future.
Imagine the valuable insights that can be gleaned from your experiences.
Take, for example, Historical information on natural disasters, responses to disease outbreaks, medical research papers, consequences of climate change and wars etc.
These are situations hold an opportunity to cultivate a learning experience.
Learning from past events can identify aspects that worked well and what didn’t. This knowledge can be used to create successful strategies in the future to prevent repeating the same situation happening again.
One example is the rise in HIV/AIDS in the 1980s developing into a global health crisis. They were no available treatments so researchers used prior knowledge of combating previous viral infections such as smallpox, measles, and polio to develop a strategy to combat HIV by developing antiretroviral therapies
This contributed to reducing the spread of the disease and improving the quality of life for those living with the virus.
This illustrates that learning from past experiences and building upon prior knowledge can contribute to adapting to adversity and being more prepared for future challenges by having better decision-making.
“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” — Mark Twain
By engrossing yourself in historical events in a broader context you can identify patterns and similarities that can better anticipate and navigate the challenges in the future.
By being reflective towards our past with the good and bad, we can use it as a guide to shape a better future. From learning from our mistakes and the successes of those who came before us. In addition to preventing the same mistakes and judgements that were responsible for destructive patterns.
Bill Gates “Think Week” Case Study
Bill Gates is an example of someone who takes a ‘Think Week’ break, involving a seven-day retreat in an isolated cabin in the forest Pacific Northwest away from the distractions and responsibilities in the life of one of the richest people in the world.
During this time he reads books, writes his thoughts and thinks. Also reading papers written by Microsoft employees proposing new ideas. These “think weeks” lead to the launching of Internet Explorer 1.0 in 1995.
It created an environment to step back and reflect on the bigger picture about your personal and professional life, global issues and the future.
This provided Bill Gates with an opportunity to think deeply and creatively about the challenges he is faced to consider new perspectives. You can have flashes of moments where you have an amazing idea when you spend some time alone that can yield a significant result.
Strategies to become more reflective
A review article that investigated different papers on reflection as a learning tool in medical education. It identified that it could contribute to engagement in the learning process, understanding complex subjects, and improved professionalism and empathy.
There are also many other reasons to start being reflective: to improve your gratitude and reduce stress, to enhance your creativity, to identify patterns in your behaviour responsible for limiting your growth or causing problems and boost your personal development.
Tips for becoming more reflective
- Allocate specific times in the day to practice reflection. This regular intention and deliberate practice of reflection should transfer to other components of your life.
- Write a journal every morning or at the end of the day about your thoughts. Examples of prompts include : “What did I learn today?”, “ What could be better?” and “ What went well today?”
- Find an environment where you can be alone with your thoughts. This could involve removing distractions, closing your eyes, sitting at the park or having a coffee while watching the view.
- being comfortable investigating your weaknesses and trying to reflect on your failures and mistakes truthfully can be difficult, but can allow you to gain a new perspective about yourself.
- Be open-minded to different views and opinions
- Have the mindset of being a student, which will encourage you to learn and be more reflective about situations
Getting a better understanding of your experiences, interactions, thoughts and ideas can become clearer and more organized through reflection.
Final Thoughts
Reflection is an important tool that can be easily overlooked. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking ahead so much that we forget the hidden and undiscovered lessons from our past experiences.
Just take these 3 easy steps: sit down. Take a deep breath. And Reflect.
