Self reflection control helps you better understand your own behaviors and motivations. You can find out here how you can learn self-reflection in practice.
We are all exposed to many different situations every day, in which we act in different ways. Sometimes we don’t quite understand ourselves why we behave the way we do. The skill of self-reflection can help you understand yourself better.
In general, self-reflection describes a person’s ability to perceive themselves and their own actions neutrally and to view or analyze them critically. This can help you better understand yourself, your actions, your motivations, and gain insights into your own personality. Self-reflection can be one way to develop yourself personally.
For example, self-reflective thinking makes it easier for you to find answers to questions about your skills, motives for action and values:
- Skills: what really suits you and what doesn’t?
- Motivations: What reasons or emotions drive you?
- Values: Which values are important to you?
- Successes and mistakes: What part did you have in certain successes, but also in mistakes?
What does science say about self reflection?
There are some studies that look at what self-reflection can do.
According to a 2011 study, self reflection can improve your ability to learn. A recent 2018 study showed that self-reflection can have several positive effects. Among other things, it can help you to cope better with trauma. Self-reflection can do this by helping you become more aware and grounded in the here and now when traumatic experiences from the past are threatening to catch up with you. You can also improve your problem-solving skills and resilience through self-reflection.
What are the benefits and implications of self reflection?
Self-reflection helps you get to know yourself better. This in turn has many other effects:
- Broadening of perspectives: You can broaden your perspectives through self-reflection. You learn to evaluate your own points of view neutrally and you may come across prejudices that you can then discard. This will make you more open to other people’s views.
- Better communication: Self-reflection can also help you improve your communication. This happens, for example, because you understand your needs and concerns better and can then express them more clearly.
- Learning for the future: Self-reflection can help you to learn something for the future from mistakes, problems or successes and to change your actions if necessary.
- Focus on solutions: During self-reflection you deal more intensively with setbacks and other problems from the past. You can learn a lot from this and look back and find solutions to past events. But you can also use this newly gained knowledge for the future and find solutions to current problems.
- Awareness: Self-reflection can help you increase your awareness. By reflecting on different areas of life, you become more aware of certain things. These could be, for example, personal strengths and weaknesses that you were not previously aware of.
- Clarity: You will generally gain more clarity about your life and personality as you deal with aspects that you may not have paid attention to before. Through self-reflection you automatically understand your own behavior better and don’t just take it for granted.
Self Reflection tips and methods
You can train your ability to control self reflection with different methods. In general, it is good if you consciously take time out so that you can reflect in peace. Ideally, you should regularly incorporate such time-outs into your everyday life in order to develop a routine for self-reflection.
Self-reflection can be done in different ways. Try the following options and stick with the one that fits best into your everyday life:
- Meditation: When you meditate, you can let your thoughts run free without judging them. You can then take notes on your stream of thoughts and possibly gain new insights into what is bothering you at the moment.
- Going for a walk: On a walk you can switch off from everyday life and let your mind wander. Take a notebook with you and write down all the things that come to mind and that seem important to you.
- Morning Pages: Every morning, sit down for a few minutes and just write whatever comes to mind on a piece of paper. This will give you an overview of certain topics that concern you and that are worth thinking about further.
- Writing a diary: Writing a diary, which has become popular again in recent years under the term “journaling”, is like a dialogue with yourself: you can put your thoughts on paper and then look at them from an observational perspective. If you like, you can also write down questions that you keep coming back to. Over time, reflection may change the answers to these questions.
If you can’t immediately think of something to reflect on, these questions might inspire self-reflection:
- What wishes do I have for my life and what is missing?
- What do I do myself for my success/my satisfaction?
- Do I know what makes me happy and content?
- What am I good at?
- What character traits make me unique?
- What do I want to strive for?
When it comes to self-reflection, remember to be really honest with yourself and not lie to yourself. After all, the goal of self reflection is not to look better on yourself. You should practice self-reflection to get to know all your sides and to understand what drives you.
FAQ
How to Control Self Reflection?
Find the Mirror in Synchronicity in Control. Track down a way into the regulation cell in Control. Investigate the reflected space inside the Mirror in Control.
What is the Synonym of self reflection?
Self reflection synonyms are self-analysis, self-awareness, critical-thinking, self-observation, self-development, reflection-in-action, reflexivity and self-reflective.
Is self awareness comes from self reflection?
Self reflection isn’t entirely different than self awareness and they are particularly associated with one another. The meaning of self reflection is the practicing of contemplation, combined with the willingness to find out about yourself.
