5 Ways Self-Reflection Can Improve Our Lives
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. — Carl Jung
Self-reflection is a habit that can dramatically improve the way we live our lives.
By cultivating a practice of reflection and integrating it into our daily or weekly routine, we take time to pause and take stock of where we are, who we are, what we are doing and where we want to go.
For the last few months, while my main career was put on hold, the stars aligned in a serendipitous way that caused me to start working part-time for an app called T-Cup. Not only has T-Cup helped me to pay the bills, but on a personal level, using it has transformed the way I live — forcing me to hold a mirror up to my habits and make more conscious, healthier decisions.
Essentially, T-Cup encourages you to build a daily self-reflection practice with the aim of improving your wellbeing in nine core areas and thus create more harmony and balance in your life. And in my opinion, it is a game-changer.
Before using T-Cup (it takes around 60 seconds per day) I had never put much thought into ‘self-reflection’ or understood it’s potential to positively impact people’s lives.
Why look back when you could look forward? I thought.
But that’s the thing.
Looking backward is the best way to assess how to move forward. It’s only once we identify our habits, tendencies, disappointments, achievements and frustrations that we can learn how to improve or build on them for the future.
After two months of reflecting everyday, I’ve definitely found myself making more positive, conscious decisions. From drinking more water to realising what external factors affect my mood (for better or worse) and understanding how to better manage these things while always keeping myself accountable, in a gentle, encouraging way.
Below are five reasons why I believe self-reflection can vastly change our lives for the better.
- Change Begins With Awareness
If we are not aware of something then we cannot make efforts to consciously change it for the better. Self-reflection is a way of taking time out of our busy lives to pause and look at the bigger picture.
Which direction are we headed in and why? Who and what matters the most to us?
Being more aware of these key factors in our lives helps us stay motivated and keep moving forward on the right path.
2. It Breaks the Cycle
In our day to day lives we are constantly reacting to what is happening to and around us, but self-reflection explores what’s happening within us. Rather than continuing to just do things the way we’ve always done them, or simply because someone has told us we should, reflecting helps us question what we do and why. Only then can we address whether there is a better or more efficient way of doing it in the future.
Essentially it means living more mindfully, rather than mindlessly.
3. You Understand Yourself Better
In self-reflecting, we are taking time to understand our thoughts and emotions better, while crucially exploring how they affect us and our behaviour. Have you ever questioned why you keep behaving in a certain way even though you wish you didn’t? What thoughts and feelings might be underlining that behaviour or habit? It’s only by reflecting on the ‘whys’ that you can truly identify, understand and improve the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ in your life.
4. It Helps You Realise What You Want
By practising self-reflection regularly, we become experienced in checking in on what exactly our minds and bodies need and crave — and also what we regret or wish we’d done differently. By doing so, we discover what paths we want to take (or create) in our lives.
Taking a few moments to internally hold up a mirror to ourselves each day, we might find that we actually have many of the answers we are seeking already within us.
5. It Cultivates Better Habits
Once we are familiar with the root causes of why we do what we do — and in turn, examine what we really want in life — we are better placed to make positive, more assertive decisions. Have you ever anxiously pained over a decision — big or small — unsure of what to do?
Since self-reflection requires us to shine a light on our unique desires and ambitions, it consequently strengthens our decision-making skills, making us more confident and assertive when dealing with the pressures and stresses of daily life.
So, whether it’s with T-Cup (which is a free app for individual users, by the way — whereas for organisations it’s paid but an utterly brilliant way of integrating better wellbeing into your workplace) or in other ways, such as writing in a journal, I’d recommend giving yourself the gift a self-reflection and joyously watch how it slowly changes your habits.
In just a few weeks you should begin to notice a difference in your habits, mood and the overall balance of your life.
