Reflection? What so good about it?
- BirdieChao
- Jul 2, 2017
- 5 min read
This is Birdie's 15th personal article
Reflections, something that we all hate to do. It is normally given as a school work or your parents’ force you to write it because you did something wrong. Or maybe some other reasons that we are just not happy about.
But, it is one of the common traits that successful people have. Successful people normal keep a journal or a planner which helps them to do daily, weekly or even monthly reflection. And they will not bullshit about what they reflect about. (Because most the time when we do, we are bullshitting)
So why do they take reflections so seriously and are so committed to it?
Reflection is all about one thing, think about what you did. And with this only, those who do it gain clarity about what they do. Because most of the time, people do things subconsciously. By doing reflection, they will know their daily successes, struggles or is their goal met. Then use it as a reference for future goal setting.
Not only in setting goals, it is also very very helpful in personal development. Because the first step in personal development is knowing yourself. So, by reflecting on your actions, you will know why you did that action then you can choose to change it or not.
What's the difference?
I know there are people out there that have been writing a journal since long ago, but they didn’t really see the benefits of writing one.
The reason is actually obvious, they aimed to look for specific things to be written down. Not like random events happened in the day. Of course, they can choose to record it down as well, but the point for their journal is never just about recording events of the day.
A successful person’s journal will normally have these few guiding questions in their mind when they write things in their journal. And you can use questions to start writing your journal as well.
1. What are some happy/success moments?
Whenever you have an input into your journal, start with the positive things first. Because just by acknowledging yourself with the good things you did or the happy moments you have. It will set the journal to a more positive vibe and will indirectly make the next few inputs to be more positive.
2. What are some struggle/unhappy moments?
Next will be identifying your mistakes and places where you can improve on. This will be the crucial part as this section is the section where it triggers growth. If the same struggle tends to happen over and over again, you know you should target that first. Eg. Procrastination
3. What am I going to improve on tomorrow/week/month?
After acknowledging your mistakes, it will be the best time to do some corrections. Because writing down the actions you plan to take next to improve yourself enhances the possibility of actually taking the action. However, don’t go ambitious on this one. Focus on one thing that you want to improve on. Less is more here.
4. Who/what am I grateful for?
This one is a bit tricky, it is not always so straight forward. But it helps you to have that different perspective of others on how other’s actually helped you. So we won’t take things for granted.
5. What did I learn today?
As the quote says small daily improvement adds up to great results, it doesn’t matter how tiny the knowledge it is you add you your brain, as long as you are keep feeding it. You will be very wise one day.
What are the different kinds of reflection?
These 5 questions are actually the questions that I asked myself when I write my daily reflections nowadays. However, these 5 questions as you can see, does not limit to daily reflections only. But it’s also applicable for weekly and monthly as well.
For me, each different time span means different kind of reflections for me.
Daily reflection is the most micro-reflection, it helps us to identify the good and bad things we did each day. However, there is no specific direction that you are actually going towards. Which means you might end up nowhere if you only use the daily reflections. (Just like me)
Weekly reflection, I’d like to call it the goal orientated kind of reflection. As it relatively short term and most likely you can set a goal for the week and by the end of the week, you see what are the good things you did and what didn’t go so well. Then from that you learn where to improve on for the next goal.
Monthly reflection is something I just learned 2 days ago. Which is also the reason why I wrote this article. Monthly reflection is relatively longer in period. It can be both as a goal orientated reflection or maybe a habit cultivation kind of reflection. Because 30 days is definitely more than 21 days which is known for the number of days to form a new habit.
With that, it actually gives a direction on where as a person you want to go or become. Or maybe for you to make some greater improvement to your life. However, it misses out the micro events happening in your life. Which plays a huge factor as well.
So I guessed you have guessed it, I personally feel it’s best to combine both daily and monthly together.So you can know your micro improvements daily towards your big goal that you want to score.
How to exactly start?
I would say, go and buy yourself a journal. Buy a good one, let’s take this seriously. I got mine from Typo, cost at least 15 bucks. But I would say it’s worth it.
Then, don’t immediately go into setting yourself ambitious goal to hit and everything. Start small and cultivate the habit first. Just try to start by writing down happy and unhappy moments of the day. Then slowly add in more of the questions.
After one month, go read what you have written and study them. Then conclude the month with the same questions above. But only choose 1-3 events for each question maximum. With only one thing to improve on.
After that, every day when you write your journal. Think about how did you move closer to the goal or how did you move away from it. Then when the month ends again. Repeat the cycle once again. If you didn’t achieve your initial goal or isn’t very happy about it. Make it your goal again and excel in it until you are happy about it.
It is never about perfection but it’s all about progression. I definitely never started out with all the questions in mind. I started out writing random stuff like finishing my homework, I'm not satisfied with my self-confidence and etc. Basically, I didn’t know exactly know what I’m journaling down.
But as the time goes by, I slowly added in questions. I started out on 1st Jan 2017. Then by 20th Feb, I added one grateful person/ thing. (By looking back, I found my birthday this year to be really lonely. I wrote I bought a cake to celebrate my own birthday. *21st Feb is my birthday*)
Followed by 30th March, I changed from jotting random events to happy and unhappy moments plus grateful things. Then on 11th May, I added in the question on what did I learn today. And just 4 days ago, on 29th June, I added in how can I improve for tomorrow.
I wouldn’t say I’m successful already, but I believe that as long as I continue to record my life down and learn from it. I’m nowhere far from being successful. And you can start now and see what difference it will cause to your life.
Lastly,thankyou so much for reading! If you find this article interesting or helpful, please do hit that like button. It really means a lot to me! And if you want to share this knowledge, feel free to share it to your friends!! just copy the link will do!
It's your choice
To live in your dreams or to be living your dreams
-BirdieChao
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