Over the next few months, I worked with her to clarify what her beliefs and thoughts about becoming a doctor were and to look at where those beliefs had come from.
And while she had “known” that she was going to be a doctor for as long as she could remember, she couldn’t articulate much about why being a doctor was especially appealing or valuable to her. It didn’t take very long working with her and listening to her story for me to realize that she actually despised medical school and didn’t seem to have any genuine interest in becoming a doctor.īut she came from a family of doctors and a family culture that prized being a doctor over everything else. I had a client who had been depressed for several years, ever since she started medical school. It means becoming aware of our own biases and stereotypes about the world, other people, or even ourselves, and working to overcome them.
Openness means the ability to see things for what they are, not what we think they should be. Let’s look at each of these advanced self-reflection skills and how we might work to cultivate them in ourselves. Like the legs of the tripod, these three independent but interconnected skills allow for optimal self-reflection, including the ability to self-reflect in real-time. But to bring our powers of self-reflection to the next level we need to cultivate three specific skills that contribute to the habit of self-reflection: Openness, Observation, and Objectivity. Most of us have the basic equipment for self-reflection-a decent camera and lens, so to speak. But as any good photographer will tell you, to get the clearest image possible, you must use a tripod to stabilize the camera and the lens, since even small vibrations and movements can distort the final image. In his book Mindsight, Dan Siegel uses the metaphor of a camera to explain self-reflection: the better the camera and clearer the lens, the more accurate the final photo will be.
Self reflection definition how to#
How to Cultivate Real-Time Self-Reflection The key to real-time self-reflection is to cultivate it as a habit, a mental muscle that’s agile enough and strong enough to be deployed on the fly and at a moment’s notice.
Self reflection definition professional#
And individuals who develop this capacity for real-time self-reflection have a huge advantage in both their personal and professional lives. The benefits of cultivating a greater capacity for self-awareness run wide and deep. How many failed marriages would still be going strong if we had a little bit more capacity for real-time self-reflection? How many high-potential businesses would be producing amazing work if their executives had 10% more capacity for real-time self-reflection? Consequently, you successfully resist the urge to interrupt and you continue to listen empathetically. But you also bring to mind your goal of getting better at just listening without justifying yourself when taking feedback. In the middle of a difficult conversation with your spouse, you begin to notice a growing sense of defensiveness and pride, as if your mind is trying to shield you from attack. It’s good to learn from past mistakes, but it’s far better to catch them in the moment or not make them in the first place. Obviously, we could all benefit from doing this kind of retrospective self-reflection more often.īut self-reflection becomes vastly more powerful when we can use it in real-time to make better decisions. We periodically reflect back on an event and how we handled it in hopes that we learn something from it and make better decisions in the future. Most of us are capable of self-reflection like this. As a result, you resolve to take time after future stressful meetings to decompress rather than jump right back into your workday. Self-reflection is the habit of deliberately paying attention to your own thoughts, emotions, decisions, and behaviors.ĭuring your commute home from work, you consider how the stress of your early morning meeting might have lead to residual anger and a poor decision with your boss at the end of the day.