So I left you attempting to be self-reflective (I hope), and gave you some time to really ruminate on the questions I shared. So let’s jump into why I’m advocating for self-reflection at such a busy time.
The Benefits of Self-Reflection
For me the greatest benefit is it promotes learning and understanding both of which are required for growth and achievement.
When we go through life without pausing to think and reflect, we don’t learn or gain a deeper understanding of life. We simply move from one thing to the next, never pausing to consider what valuable lessons we might learn.
Self-reflection, on the other hand, enables us to evaluate and process what we’ve experienced. It allows us to think deeply and ponder the meaning of our circumstances, emotions and motivations.
Practising self-reflection takes discipline and intentionality. It requires pressing pause on the chaos of life and simply taking the time to think and ponder about your life, which is not an easy thing for many people to do.
If this all just feels unnecessary or you’re struggling with this in any way, can I ask; was growth one of your top values? (if you did the exercise in the Values Blog?) Self-reflection requires that you value growth very highly as this means you prioritise self-improvement and personal development. It requires a hunger and eagerness to want to improve yourself and improve your working life. It requires being willing and able to answer questions asked about yourself, about life and about the people you interact with.
Moreover, it requires being alert, curious and open to the vast array of possibilities that exist before you. And this, of course, requires also being open to changing your mind and perspective about things that you possibly never before questioned – that means expanding your comfort zone beyond what feels normal and natural. Critically examining your life and yourself including exploring your faults, weaknesses, insecurities, mistakes and failures. For most people, this is an absolute nightmare and something to avoid at all costs as it feels like opening Pandora’s Box. It’s a process that once started brings about many complications that often we just don’t want to deal with or for that matter resolve.
Self-reflection requires that you are open and honest with yourself. It requires that you look deep within yourself at all the parts of yourself that are not all that attractive and could very well be downright ugly. These are the parts of yourself that will lead to a better life if you are willing and able to explore them with the intention of gaining valuable growth and self-improvement.
Most people are convinced that they are right most of the time, and when the evidence is stacked against them, they complain, make excuses or throw blame. This kind of attitude never gains value from the process of self-reflection. You must turn off victim mentality and take responsibility for your life and circumstances.
People who have overcome the greatest of odds are the ones who do a tremendous amount of soul-searching. This helps them to put all their experiences into perspective, which further allows them to make better choices and decisions.
Regular periods of self-reflection effectively allow you to:
• Learn from your failures, mistakes, and experiences.
• Clarify your values, priorities, and strengths.
• Release emotional attachment to people, things, and events.
• Make better choices, independent decisions, and new associations.
• Remove inner roadblocks that hold you back from achieving your goals.
• Examine your habitual behaviour patterns and intuitive feelings.
• Uncover hidden dreams and aspirations as well as undiscovered potential.
• Gain deeper insights into your thoughts and a vast array of experiences.
• Expand your perspective and understanding of people and situations.
• Better spot potential problems and opportunities in advance.
• Respond calmly and appropriately to challenges that may have otherwise hindered your progress.
And of course, all these benefits in combination help improve your self-confidence and self-esteem, allowing you to get the most from yourself and from your natural abilities in every situation you face.
For those of you who prefer structure and models, here is one for how self-reflection works neuro-scientifically
The Pyramid of Self Reflection Model
The pyramid of self-reflection model stems from the perception that, without self-examination, individuals are unlikely to sort through and acknowledge the underpinnings of their life experiences. The model depicts the steps required to become sophisticated learners who make meaning of their personal discoveries in ways that enlighten their future experiences with structures that also support becoming the architect of their own transformation.
It is aligned with Galileo’s philosophy that:
“One cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself”.
In this model, the process of reflection can be likened to the design of a pyramid. The majority of the weight and spread are closer to the bottom and the process narrows as one ascends to the top.
Reflecting, using the pyramid of self-reflection, is recursive in that one could travel up the pyramid to test the fruitfulness of one’s assumptions or travel down the pyramid to investigate the origin of one’s conventions. It is instructive in helping you slow down to ask those difficult questions with regards to each point along the pyramid.
To illustrate the point, the heart (or belief system) is at the base of the pyramid. The heart gives birth to thoughts, that in turn fuel emotions and attitudes that shape a person’s words, actions, habits, and over time, their character.
In essence, when a person’s character is observed, one is really seeing only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath one’s character is an entire history of positive and/or negative beliefs that have served as the foundation for one’s character. Therefore, understanding self requires getting to the heart of the matter. (to get into the sub-conscious patterns that are driving 95% of actions)
“Watch your thoughts; they lead to attitudes. Watch your attitudes; they lead to words. Watch your words; they leads to actions. Watch your actions; they lead to habits. Watch your habits; they form your character. Watch your character; it determines your destiny.”
The Pyramid of Self Reflection – The Heart
The heart (human spirit), houses the belief system and is the place from which intentions and motivations emanate. Beliefs can be pure or not and they can embrace truth or not. The problem with beliefs is that they can be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, beliefs can enlighten, open one to new evidence, energize and even empower. On the other hand, beliefs can send a person over a precipice of intransigence closing one off from new ideas.
The most challenging aspect of beliefs is that they were formed mostly during our formative years, before we could intellectually or emotionally process them. In this model, the veracity of beliefs determines the remaining steps in the pyramid.
“If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier” – Peter McWilliams
“The only limits you have are the limits you believe” – Wayne Dyer
The Pyramid of Self Reflection – Thoughts
The affairs of the heart (beliefs, faith, intuition, hunches and the like) frame thoughts that determine which ideas, concepts, models, and theories we will embrace as well as those we will discard or ignore.
It is important to note that mental assent is different than believing. Information can be accepted as factual yet disbelieved. When mentally reasoned albeit disbelieved, the thought remains academic in nature serving as a theory; whereas, when information is believed and accepted as truth, the thought moves forward and becomes a theory-in-use.
As you know from a neuroscientific perspective, when any thought is repeated or considered important, it is hard-coded for conservation of time and energy into the neural pathways so the subconscious can utilise it at will. On one hand, this means we spared the inconvenience of re-thinking every single concept. On the other hand, this disallows future considerations and analyses. These mental models become your concepts on how people are and how things work. These also then play a major role in decision-making, as they form the basis against which you make decisions.
“As a person thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7)
The Pyramid of Self Reflection – Emotions
For certain, thoughts are no small matter as meditated thoughts coming from a believing heart carry feelings, sentiments, and affections that are expressed through emotions. Goleman (1995) promoted the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ) as personal and social competencies that are so important that they are the largest single predictor of success in the workplace. Bar-On (1997) advanced the work describing EQ as determining how well you understand and express yourself, how well you understand others and relates to them, and how well you cope with daily demands, challenges, and pressures.
“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” – Daniel Goleman
The Pyramid of Self Reflection - Attitudes
Prolonged and sustained emotions, whether positive or negative, influence your attitudes or state of mind, mood, temperament, and disposition. It might be expressed through your pitch and tone of voice and/or through body language such as facial expressions, gestures, and posture.
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your Altitude.” – Zig Ziglar
The Pyramid of Self Reflection - Words
Words are powerful because they convey images and messages; they are carriers that can hearten or demoralize, lift, or deflate. Consider concepts such as verbal insults, verbal offenses, and verbal abuse and you get a greater sense of the power of words.
The words chosen can often indicate the level of belief – explore your answers to the questions – do they reflect an espoused theory or a theory-in-use?
The later propel movement and have a direct bearing on the conduct and behaviour that lead to actions that can run the gamut from life-giving to venomous.
Science has documented the power of words to affect one’s actions. For instance, scientists have found that just hearing or reading sentences about elderly people leads research subjects to walk more slowly. In other research, when individuals read words that are considered aggressive and bold, the participants acted accordingly directly thereafter. The flip side of that study reported that participants who read words that represented respectfulness and kindness responded accordingly. I’ve previously shared the study of how plants react to different words – dying or thriving just on the energetic difference of words.
When we look at how we communicate to one another, or to teams – are we really thinking about the power of the words we chose to use. There is always more than one way to explain something and the words are what determine that.
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne.
“A word is dead when it is said some say. I say it just begins to live that day” – Emily Dickinson
The Pyramid of Self Reflection - Actions
Words shape behaviour, the way people conduct themselves, and the things they accomplish straightaway, in stages, or through frequent repetition. Words that are spoken from the convictions of the heart as well as those words that speak to the convictions of the heart are acted upon.
Conversely, when one speaks hastily due to pressures of self-preservation or self-aggrandizement, one is unable to substantiate the words. This is the difference between talking the talk, or walking the walk - making action of greater consequence because it is the process of changing reality. Another consideration is the power of one action. This can be likened to the butterfly effect in that one small action at one place in a complex system can have large effects throughout the system.
In many ways this is what we are here to do. To hold firm to the belief of the positive power of change that new Technology can bring. and to stand for that in our words and actions every day in every way for every aspect of our role. In just the same way that as parents we may hold firm to the morals we want to instil in our children.
“Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe” – Mark Victor Hansen
The Pyramid of Self Reflection - Habits
Over the course of daily living, habits are learned, whether they develop intentionally or unintentionally. We’ve talked about how to do this intentionally in previous Blogs, but regardless of how you develop them, habits are settled tendencies and manners of behaviour that become fixed through recurrence. Unfortunately, when performing habits, we tends not to engage in self-analysis and often with limited to no introspection to their causes. This makes so much of our life a matter of automaticity. Something we love in Technology, but not so much in our own behaviours.
“Free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot”. Malcolm Gladwell
The Pyramid of Self Reflection – Character
Character is what people have come to expect from a person as it reflects their habits. It is indispensable for long-term success as it is the ultimate determinant of whether your talents, gifts, and abilities will allow you to reach your potential and capture all of the advantages you self-investments should afford you (Cloud, 2006).
“Character is both formed and revealed by how one deals with everyday situations as well as extraordinary pressures and temptations. Like a well-made tower, character is built stone by stone, decision by decision”. – Michael Josephson
“Character is simply habit long continued”. – Plutarch
This is quite a long blog, so apologies, but I think it’s a useful tool to reflect on the relationship and process and demonstrates the inextricable link and flow that if we are aware of we can use to our benefit. I hope you agree.
“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny”
Until next time…
