The Power of Reflection

It is amazing to me how often I see people forgetting that they are in control of their own story. We all do it… we get so busy going on a particular life path, and focus on the worry and the stress and the to-do lists that we become consumed by “going” and accomplishing... and forget if where we are going is really the right direction.

In many ways it is easier to just continue on the path you’re headed, expand your current efforts, and maintain the friendships you have.

Looking at my own life, it wasn’t until Cheti, (my nonprofit organization dedicated to creating educational opportunity for the impoverished youth of Tanzania), ran into hurdles that it ever occurred to me to just stop: stop working, stop writing, and stop worrying. I even remember my fiancé said “you know, you can take a day off from Cheti,” and I went on for about 20 minutes explaining why that was impossible.

What was I so afraid was going to happen?

I think I was afraid to stop because I was fearful of what I might see when I finally took the time to look.

Now after 5 months of “stopping,” reflection happened. I now see things that otherwise went unnoticed in my focused, dedicated mind. I saw that I had lost myself in my work, without time for other interests and hobbies. I could see that my personal values that had begun to shift. And as this reflection period continued, I began to foster new interests that I had not allowed myself to see before. I realized how similar this situation was to the minute I recognized nearly three years ago, “I need to leave NYC as soon as possible”! The city no longer fed my soul. It had made me cynical and hardened, and I finally allowed myself to see that my life there was no longer serving me.

I now see the power of reflection across all aspects of life. It allows us to view ourselves in our current situation from a bird’s eye view: the characters in our story, the plot, hear our soundtrack, and foresee the upcoming or current conflicts.

It gives us time to ask, is this the story I want to create? Does this person, project, job, relationship align with my core values? Does it provide me with what I want out of life, or do I need to change directions, write a new script, add a new character? Reflection challenges us.

In Physics, reflection is “the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two different media so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated”.*

If you know that you love to feel free, you value family and friends before anything, and you are passionate about enabling creativity, then it should be easy to “clean house” of anything that doesn’t serve you in this way. If there are toxic relationships you are holding onto, unfulfilled passions brewing in your soul, projects draining your time and affecting your priorities; it is reflection that enables us to see these conflicts and then allow yourself to disengage from what isn’t working. Then, you can return to the “medium” from which you originated, staying true to you.

Not everything in life is intended to last forever, in fact most things don’t. Sometimes projects, jobs, partnerships, and friendships come into our lives to teach us something and then with time, they are meant to exit.

Through reflection we give ourselves the power to control these exits and ensure we are living a life that fulfills us. All we need to do is allow ourselves to stop, breathe, and constantly seek. Chapter after chapter, we can write our own story.

What is a method of reflection that you find works best for you?

Is there a time that you learned a valuable lesson about yourself through reflection?

(*Wikipedia)