How to Practice Self Reflection and Develop Better Self Awareness
How to Practice Self Reflection
Everyone needs to do some self reflection because no one is perfect.
Everyone makes mistakes and will make mistakes. Without using self reflection as a tool, you won’t learn from your experiences and you’re bound to repeat them again. It’s your responsibility to develop better self awareness because if you don’t, then you’re not improving.
You’re staying stagnant.
No more wondering “how to practice self reflection?”
Importance of Being Self Aware
Better Decision Making
Your quality of life is based on the actions you take.
Making better decisions means that your life will be better. By being self aware, you learn from your mistakes and you don’t repeat them because you understand yourself.
Better Relationships
You’ll learn about the behaviors that hurt others unintentionally and will work on improving them. Again, you’re working on the mistakes you’re making so that next time, you don’t hurt anyone and suffer the consequences. You start developing some emotional intelligence which will help you deal with others.
And most of our lives is dealing with others, so this is an important thing to work on.
Self Reflection Tips
- Start to write daily about your life. Write down all your thoughts, feelings, and experiences so that you can come back to them later. Think about all three of these to find patterns and areas you can improve on.
- Ask yourself questions to prompt thinking about actions. Specifically, “How did I react in difficult situations? What did I learn from my challenges?”
- Do some meditation. You’ll find that sitting alone will automatically bring up thoughts about things. Emotions trigger thoughts, so sitting alone will provide insight into how you’re feeling.
How to Develop Better Self Awareness
Steps to Develop Self Awareness
- Develop mindfulness as that’s the base for self awareness. Becoming aware of your thoughts and placing attention on the present moment.
- Ask people for feedback because what you think about yourself is different than what people perceive. It’ll help you notice discrepancies and you’ll fix things accordingly.
- Set time to think about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
- Track every emotional response and figure out the deeper reason why you felt a response. Doing so will help you find things you may be unaware of.
Overcoming Excuses for Self Awareness
Fear of Ourselves
You may avoid self reflection because you’re afraid of what you will discover. Looking at old wounds, resolved emotions, and things about ourselves that we would rather prefer hidden. But the thing is that facing this fear is what leads to healing and growth for everyone involved. Give yourself time to process everything and offer forgiveness for yourself like you’d do others.
“Lack of Time”
Everyone has time. If you genuinely work all day, at all times, then sleep 5-10 minutes later than usual. Use that time to practice self awareness. Instead of spending time on your phone. (check your screentime) Use that time for important things like self reflection.
External Distractions
Turn off your phone and go to a quiet place. If you have urges to go back to your phone then that’s an underlying problem you have to address. It means you’re overstimulated and if you’re not experiencing the same levels of dopamine, then you’re withdrawing.
Avoiding Uncomfortable Emotions
It’s better to fix things now than never.
Don’t avoid feelings like guilt, sadness, or anger because then you’ll never grow.
Lack of Trust in Yourself
Seek feedback from others if it’s hard to trust your own judgments and thoughts. Write down all of your thoughts and read them. Over time, you’ll start gaining confidence in your ability to understand yourself.
That’s How to Develop Better Self Awareness
Self reflection should be simple to understand now that you know what you’re doing.
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