After you love what you do and do it with effort and focus, as well as with commitment and perseverance not to give up until it’s done, one more step you can’t miss to make it perfect is reflection. Reflection is one of the most important processes in doing anything as it helps you evaluate what you have done. It’s the time to check what’s right and wrong. Are there any mistakes that can be avoided next time? What to prepare to make it better? Where to research for more information? Which sources are reliable? All those questions need to be asked during the reflection process.
Blinded to see the truth?
Reflection can be done in two ways: by yourself and by people around you. Self-reflection is the process in which you check with yourself the above mentioned questions to improve your performance. However, the obstacle you will face is your own ego. We all have ego, more or less, with or without realizing. With ego, you may not reflect correctly as you’re blinded to see the truth. Therefore, you can use another kind of reflection to fulfill the process which is the reflection by other people, like your teammates, boss, subordinates or even your friends and family by asking for comment directly or doing a kind of a questionnaire for feedback. Here, however, the obstacle may be your bias. There are four main kinds of biases: bias due to love, hatred, fear, and ignorance. So, your bias can blind you to see the truth as well.
Therefore, people who can do either self-reflection or reflection by others well are the ones who have a growth mindset or the ones who believe they can do better next time even though this time, they do it well. They love to develop further or improve with no condition. This mindset will bring you to self-reflection naturally and without fear from comments or feedback. Some people are afraid to fix or correct things while some are too lazy to make it better. If so, you can’t make it better!
Developing a growth mindset
The question is how to develop a growth mindset, right? Meditation is one of the answers to support you in having a growth mindset, as well as lowering your ego and eliminating your bias. Because meditation helps you see things as they are. Why can meditation do that magic? Because meditation can purify your mind to be clean, clear, and calm which makes you able to hear your inner voice. Many times we know many things by ourselves if we have an ability to listen to our own selves. And deep down, we know what we should or should not do, it’s just a matter of being able to listen to it or follow it.
At WPI, we have a Better ME Model that explains about the whole process from self-reflection to self-discovery, to self-awareness, to self-acceptance, to self-development, to self-esteem and finally to the self-ideal, as well as how to develop the growth mindset, how to maintain your willpower, how to lower your ego or how to minimize your bias and more. If you want to know more, you can check in our mobile app, Enlighten Me, or contact us to host the online or offline workshop.
Courage to do reflection
When we launched the 1st version of our online self-development program called “Peace Revolution“, we did a lot of reflection especially among participants from our program to make it better. Though it was 10 years ago, I can remember well how during our training, participants could comment on everything regarding our online program. Everyone stormed in to say something I would never know if we hadn’t made this private and group reflection possible. Something funny but many things difficult to accept.
In order to hear the truth from the reflection, you need to make people feel safe and sound too so they would speak from their hearts. Of course, you don’t want to hear many things as they may hurt your feelings and some can discourage you to continue on your work but if you want to be better, why not have the courage to do this reflection? Good luck with your work!
If you want to start a journey towards yourself, join our online self-development program, and download our Mind stories app.