Four Practices for Self-Reflection

We all have a need for self-reflection. Each of us needs time to look back on things and people we have experienced and find out what to take from it. It provides a path to process our lives, so that we might be constantly understanding ourselves and where we are going. There’s a million ways to consider doing this, but here are a few that you can do that are not meant to be shared, but understood.

Write about each day. Journal about what happened, but more importantly, journal about yourself. Reflect on what you learned, what influenced you, and what moved you. These are the keystones that make the water shake up and move forward.

Write a succinct summary of a day. Find six words that describe what you did each day and what it meant to you. Forcing yourself into a limit provides a small challenge at the end of each day, but it also gives you a way of understanding yourself on a given Tuesday. You can always look back on that season and find some of the amazing, low, and mundane days to see how you processed your world in a few words.

Write a summary of each week. Use one paragraph to describe your experiences from the past week and what you took from it, that you might more deeply reflect on what it meant to you. How does this week fit into the series of all 52 seasons of this year? Writing a slightly longer summary shows the trajectory of a series of days, and looking at these summaries in a sequence shows the trajectory of your life in an entire season.

Write down anything that is valuable to you. It does not matter what it is or how you process it, it simply matters how you are doing it. Summaries may not be helpful to you, but writing down your top three memories of gratitude might be. You may also enjoy simply writing your favorite memory of the day, and journaling a few sentences about why that experience stuck out so much. Completing the practice of writing down valuable things retrains your brain to search for valuable things in the every day of your life.

Writing is not the all-encompassing task of self-reflection and processing, but it is a simple and powerful one. It is simple in that everyone can do it. We all have access to a pencil and paper, a phone with a notes app, or a computer with a word processing program. The reason writing is powerful is that it can keep you accountable, and it keeps a measurable view of your work. There is no wondering what you did or what you thought about it, because your writing is there to prove it and provide a memory – good or bad – that shares what you were expressing and experiencing at the time.

Are there ways to self-reflect without writing? Of course, and please do them. I myself process the world externally, which is why writing and speaking to others work so well for me. Others might need a quiet walk in nature or a time of meditation. It matters more that you begin to cultivate self-reflection, not that you are using the perfect method. Either way, you are processing something about yourself that moves the needle of your life in a singular direction for a season. Write down your life, not that others might see it, but that you might see it.