What are you doing over the holidays? I ask Mitch, an Executive in a Dallas Engineering firm as we ponder our holiday plans. Are you going to have a traditional Christmas?
Well, my wife’s parents were going to come down from Arkansas but they just canceled, Mitch sighs. It will be just the 2 of us and the 2 young ones. It will be quiet, he adds.
Quiet. That sounds wonderful to me.
Quiet can also feel a little scary after an intense year, with a world in turmoil. It can bring up a whole lot of not so pleasant thoughts.
Consider this: Instead of obsessing about regrets or the social demands of the season, why not sneak in a bit of intentional quiet time! Quiet time with a PURPOSE.
Reflection time. Thinking time. Feeling time.
Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon’s reflection."
Rumi
The benefits of reflection time are endless. Classic research by Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and Bradley Staats in call centers, for example, demonstrated that employees who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day reflecting about lessons learned performed 23% better after 10 days than those who did not reflect (Harvard Business School, 4/2014). Powerful, right?
In my experience as an Executive Coach, a lack of self-awareness is THE #1 career derailer. Always. Self-awareness is enhanced through acts of intentional self-reflection. Self-reflection time leads us to examine beliefs and values that may not serve us. It makes us conscious.
If self-reflection time is so beneficial, why do many of us avoid it? Well, it can feel uncomfortable. YES. We confound reflection time with dreaded workplace performance reviews. EEEK. We prefer doing to stopping and not doing. YES – and so what? Perhaps we don’t know how to get started, and so we settle for accidental self-awareness.
Self-reflection is easily started by asking helpful questions. Questions that are not about “beating yourself up.” I urge you to start here.
Gratitude questions are a perennial favorite - and they can feel like a bit of a cliché. Yeah, I know how to do that! you may think to yourself. Yes, I have no doubt you do – and how often do you actually “go there?”
Thinking gratitude is one thing. Even when it is heartfelt, it tends to be fast and fleeting. Writing down what we’re grateful for takes us to the well. The more things we write down, the more spring forth. Especially in a year as volatile as 2024, when it is so much easier to focus on everything that went wrong, jotting down what we’re grateful for will yield heaps of surprises.
A bonus: Writing down what we’re grateful for delivers many ancillary insights. About our behavior in situations that “worked.” How we enabled good outcomes. How we allowed the easy wins and quick successes. And how we at times, perhaps, didn’t.
This question goes to THE basic strengths-based principle: Focus on what you do well and do more of that instead of constantly trying to fix things that you don’t do so well.
We don’t have to be good at everything. It is hugely liberating to know that and let it be. There is little joy in constantly “fixing” the things we “should” be good at but are not. By amplifying what we do well, we energize ourselves. When we energize ourselves, we energize everyone else in our orbit. Good begets more good. Success begets more success.
Let your reflection time be joyous. Give yourself permission to reflect with genuine curiosity. You will, of course, stumble on things that you did not do well, wished you had done better, wished you could do over again. Good. There are insights here. These insights have a different flavor when we’re not on a Let me Beat Myself Up Mission.
The word touched is not meant to signify touchy-feely. Not fluffy, superficial, lack of substance. Think of things, situations, people, causes, moments, movements that have stirred you deeply this year. Moved your heart and soul. Ignited your humanity. Know what these things were and are. They are the things that connect you with who you are at your finest. They activate your deepest beliefs and values. They link to your spiritual core, even if it is a core that operates in deep hiding behind your rational mind.
Knowing what touches us is a rich gateway to a more authentic expression of ourselves. It is a guidepost to a more impactful way if being and engaging in the world. Self-reflection opens that door.
MEMO to Self: This is my first holiday season in a new city and country. I am invited to more social activities, holiday parties, events here in Setubal than I ever was in South Florida.
It is tempting to go wild. NO is a very fine answer. After a very busy year, I need to honor my own reflection questions.
Keep it simple.
Go within.
