Self Reflection

Hey all!

I was reflecting on things today, and strangely enough I was reflecting on how reflecting on myself has altered my life for the positive.

I know. That's confusing.

But really, taking the time to reflect on myself has really helped me grow as a person in a lot of ways that I really didn't realize until I - you guessed it - reflected on it.

Now, I usually think of my self-reflective ways as either bordering on overthinking, or straight up overthinking. Sometimes - it is. But more often than that, it really helps me process through my feelings, other points of views in a situation, where something may have gone awry, and how to move forward while acknowledging that my feelings about the situation are real and fair.

For example, the other day I was being a little sassy out loud at work and maybe opened my mouth a little too much by saying to my coworker I wasn't going to be spending another day bored out of my mind cleaning and re-cleaning things because they won't send staff home. Naturally, my boss overheard this questioned me in an obviously scolding way in front of everyone before pulling me into the office to then switch tracks and say she understood that I didn't mean it exactly how it came out and knows I mean well and that she should send some people home because it is wasting money on nothing. Unsurprisingly, I was really, really mad for a while. I was mad because of a lot of things about the conversation that I didn't think were right, but what bugged me the most was being publicly humiliated and then told oh no everything's fine once no one could see or hear anything anymore. But I had to keep trying to remind myself, hey you're at work and you opened your mouth at work - so I started it in a way. I also tried reminding myself that she probably got upset and then when she realized that I didn't mean it as in I'm not willing to work (which she realized fast because of my consistent work ethic) she realized she made a mistake and pulled me into the office - it just was unfortunate timing.

I'm not going to lie, this did not make me feel better for several hours. I was still upset. But having to keep coming back to "well I made a mistake first" after getting angry about her mistakes eventually pulled me back to a state of its over, its not a big deal, time to get over it.

I think about self reflection a lot, because situations like this remind me of things I've seen with others where they couldn't get to that point of reflecting enough on things other than their own personal reactions to an event to make a difference in how the situation stayed with them. I think of the example situation above as a mistake made by two people that ended up perfectly well. I would hope in the future both I and my boss would do better, and being able to fully reflect on the situation helps ensure that I have that knowledge and ability to do so.

This is just one example story of this. And like I said often times the act of self reflection, frankly, sucks. But its the rewards from this time where you work on your skills that help move you forward.

We'd love to hear your stories of self reflection, so please send us a message or email with them!