57 Reflections for More Self-Awareness
A No More Snooze Ride Along
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards - Kierkegaard
Last night, I was thinking about the events that have happened in my life and I was shocked at how many seismic shifts there have been in the past 5 years alone.
Here are a few of those:
Bought a house
Sold that house
Bought another house
Quit my job
Started a company
Closed the company during the pandemic
Got engaged
Got married
Wife got cancer
Wife beat cancer
Started a job in tech
Quit that job
Got another job
Started a newsletter
Lived through a pandemic
Now as you can see, some of those are bigger shifts than others but they have all made me the person that I am today. Each of those had an impact, both positively and negatively, on my health, wealth and relationships.
I’ve had some “successes” and I’ve had plenty of “failures”, but I was surprised at how many events that have happened in the past 5 years because I have never taken the chance to reflect.
The question ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’ has always felt like an impossible question to answer. Now I know why.
The world is too random, too unpredictable, too chaotic to even fathom what might happen in the next 5 years.
We can plan for our future and do things to work toward where we want to be, but there is a degree of uncertainty in the world that we will never be able to account for.
What is absolutely certain however, is that the person I am today is VERY different to the person I was 5 years ago. I won’t be the same person I am today in 5 years from now either.
I know things now that I could never have known 5 years ago because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The same will be true in 2028.
If you’re unhappy with where you are today, or you had a different vision for the person that you would become, you should recognise that tomorrow you can be whoever you want to be. In 5 years time, you won’t recognise the person you are today.
Our life events and experiences mold our personality and impact the way we think and how we behave.
Life happens pretty quickly and we are all playing the Hero in our own movie. The hero never recognises their own shortcomings, at least not in the beginning. The hero acts on emotion and gets into a lot of trouble along the way (it would be a pretty boring movie otherwise). I don’t fancy being a Hollywood movie hero much.
Yet, I am pretty terrible at recognising why I feel a certain way or why something has happened the way it has. In other words, I lack self-awareness.
The reason for that, I think, is because I have never looked back. I’ve never sat with my thoughts and recollected the past.
This lack of introspection has led me to make decisions that at the time I thought was right because I was going with my gut. I think a quiet reflective session would’ve helped steer me away from some of those decisions and down a different path.
Think about Alcohol Anonymous meetings. At its core they are reflective sessions. An opportunity for each person to share with the group their progress and reflect on their past behaviours. This hopefully leads to the alcoholic recognising destructive behaviours and seeing the pattern of choices they have made that led them to being the person they are today.
Unlike AA, we don’t need to share our reflections with anyone if we don’t want to but the premise and outcome remains the same … to gain more self-awareness and understanding of who we are today to become a better version of ourselves tomorrow.
Today is my 30th birthday. I see no better time than now to start a reflection practice.
Every Sunday evening, I will take 20 minutes to reflect on the past 7 days.
Every quarter, I will take 2 hours to reflect on the past 3 months.
Every year, I will take a day to reflect on the past 52 weeks.
That’s 57 reflections. 57 opportunities to sit and introspect. 57 journal entries for self-awareness. 57 chances to synthesise my thoughts, actions and gain more perspective of self.
What did I do, how was I feeling, what happened to me, what happened for me, what went against me, who went against me, where did I go wrong, what did I do right, what should I do more of, what should I do less of.
I’ll likely conduct this reflection in a notion doc and I’m happy to share this template with anyone that wants to join me in this practice. Leave a comment if you’re interested and I’ll share this in next week’s edition.
If, like me, you have never taken the chance to reflect and introspect, join me today for 20 minutes. I’ll post my first reflective journal entry on Twitter - @MrJakeHarris. Follow along (if you like).