Building Awareness One Step at A Time
Building your soft skills bank is the bridge that would help you build better relationships and career options. Hence, it would help if you started gaining awareness about where you are now and where you want to be. One of the tools for achieving better self-awareness is self-reflection.
Eight Tips for Self-Reflection1
1. Make a promise to be honest with yourself. Self-reflection uncovers many things about ourselves. Some of which might be pleasant, while others will require self-acceptance. Being honest with oneself is crucial to make self-reflection derive the required benefits.
2. Prepare a situation that might help you with reflection. Ask yourself questions such as:
- What happened?
- How did I feel? Why?
- How did I react? Why?
- Would I do the same reaction next time?
3. Prepare questions to aid you with the process:
- Am I maintaining emotional intelligence with my team?
- Am I communicating as clearly and concisely as I think?
- Am I getting stressed over things I can't control?
4. Book a meeting with yourself for self-reflection daily; 15 to 30 minutes daily is enough and will help you yield good results.
5. Choose a place where you can sit comfortably and feel relaxed. Adjust the lighting and seating to help you have an enjoyable time.
6. Observe behavior patterns: As you continue your self-reflection, you might start noticing patterns. Everybody is a creature of habit. Both useful and unhelpful habits can be found among them. To actively diminish the behaviors you don't want and reinforce the ones you want, it helps to be conscious of your habits.
7. Keep track of your self-reflections: Keep your dates and timings in your journal so you can check your patterns and progress.
8. Forgive Yourself: Old habits are difficult to break, and change is difficult. When you don't get things right, be kind to yourself. It's alright. All of us are human. Everybody makes errors.
1USC Price, 24 Apr 2018, 3 Simple Ways to Practice Self-reflection, Accessed 6 Nov 2022, https://eml.usc.edu/blog/practice-self-reflection
Healthy Place, 13 Dec 2016, Silke Morin, Five Tips on Self Reflection for personal growth, Accessed 6 Nov 2022, https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/livingablissfullife/2016/12/self-reflection-a-valuable-tool-for-personal-growth
For more about this topic, download our latest book " The Soft Skills Treasure Quest" for FREE:
