The key to leading a happy and peaceful life is learning to control your emotions irrespective of your environment. Using a self reflection kit will help you become more aware of yourself and your surroundings. Ultimately, helping you maintain deep, meaningful relationships with others.
Confronting yourself about your shortcomings is a sincere way to work towards your personal development.
According to reports, 75% of adults practice self reflection to increase their self awareness.
This shows that you are serious about removing any bad habits that are hindering your growth. Yes, it is not easy to understand your own shortcomings and work towards improving them but it’s definitely important. This is how you hold yourself accountable.
The process is uncomfortable but it helps you become more self-aware. It gradually shows you the root causes of your behavior and helps you control your emotions.
If you wish to do this, the key is to create a self reflection kit that helps you to achieve all of this. In this blog, you will learn about all the essentials that you need to create a self reflection kit.
How to Create Your Self Reflection Kit? 9 Easy Steps to Follow
Self reflection is the act of looking inward and analyzing your thoughts, behaviors, and ideas.
It’s a process where you actively contemplate a topic and try to process it. It gives you a new perspective and insight into your lifestyle and the impact it can have on your goals.
What is a Self Reflection kit? 9 Step You Must Follow to Create it
A self reflection kit refers to the tools and techniques that help you in your self improvement journey. Using it regularly enables you to join the dots that you may have missed before and identify your strengths and weaknesses.
1. Find your ‘why’
Finding your why is a crucial part of creating your very own self reflection kit. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to practice self reflection and what are my goals?”.
When you start with strong reasons, it’s easier to stick with your goals in the long term.
Be mindful of the goals you set. Shift your focus from materialistic goals to realistic ones. Instead of aiming to buy a new car or house, aim to build self-discipline and self-control.
The latter may take you some time to develop but in the long term, it will bring you more success.
Once you have set your goals, assess your present status. Identify your weaknesses and strengths. Take some time and write them down on a piece of paper. You can even use it as a reference for analyzing your progress by creating a vision board.
2. Step away from distractions
Today’s fast-paced world has made it easy for everyone to stay connected. Although it’s an incredible blessing, it often ends up becoming a curse.
Smartphones and social media have become a constant source of distraction for many. People are struggling to stay present in the moment.
When you create your self reflection kit, ensure that you step away from every source of distraction. You can keep your smartphone in another room, unplug your television, and cut off all potential sources of distractions.
Self reflection is the process of developing self-awareness. If you place yourself in a loud & highly stimulating environment and expect to reflect peacefully, you are missing out on the whole point.
3. Practice Gratitude
Adding the gratitude practice to your self reflection kit can be a game-changer. It helps you shift your focus to little things in life like having meals three times a day, catching your bus on time, reaching home safely, etc.
When you are writing a gratitude journal or giving thanks in your prayers, you must be thankful for two things. Firstly, be grateful for everything that you have received so far. Secondly, be thankful for the role of other people in your life.
In the long term, you will create a web of well-being for yourself that strengthens your emotional well-being. Self reflection is a never-ending process and having gratitude will carry you through thick and thin.
4. Meditate
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
Regurgitating your past and fantasizing about your future is easy but focusing on your present takes courage. Perhaps, this is why staying in the present also brings the most fruitful rewards.
Meditation helps you to declutter your mind and create space to focus on things that genuinely matter. It helps you to become more self-aware and stimulates deeper and critical thinking that is needed for self reflection.
When you sit down to meditate, your mind will naturally start to wander. There’s nothing to worry about. Whenever you start to drift apart, bring yourself back to the present and try again. Practice will make you better.
5. Set your goals
Setting your short-term and long-term goals is yet another essential part of the self reflection kit. As mentioned earlier, keep your goals as non-materialistic as possible.
If you want to improve your writing skills, set the goal of developing self-discipline to hit your daily word count goal. This is much more realistic than falling prey to the false glorification of scaling your business from zero to six figures in 3 months.
Having certain short-term and long-term goals in place will help you stay focused on your journey and track your progress. It will bring you closer to your aims and analyze if there are any patterns that you need to break your bad habits.
6. Use paper and a pen
The first step towards solving a problem is identifying them. When you write down your emotions on a piece of paper, you are stimulating your brain to work through them. You start to get perspectives, ideas, and realizations that never crossed your mind before.
It doesn’t matter if you are starting with a gratitude journal or writing your goals, the best method to make the most out of it is using pen and paper.
Think of beautifully crafted hand-made paper with a hardcover and a pen that glides like butter. I don’t know about you, but it surely makes me drool!
Make your self reflection kit as exciting and appealing as possible. This way, you will still keep coming to it even when a couple of months have passed. Moreover, you will get to reread your journey later and realize how far you have come.
7. Practice Journaling
Journaling is a powerful tool that nurtures a space for you to record your thoughts, experiences, and reflections. When used as a part of a self reflection kit, it lets you track your progress and analyze your emotions.
Practicing journaling encourages you to introspect and it lets yu=ou identify patterns which can be gradually improved. When you go through your entries later, you will be able to observe personal growth and refine their strategies.
You can even create a DIY journal for yourself based on the end goal or your purpose of journaling.
8. Try to self-talk
I don’t know who needs to hear this but you can be a down-to-earth person without the self-deprecating talk.
No matter how successful you become, you will always have a voice in the back of your head telling you, you are not good enough. When you talk negatively about yourself, you are only strengthening that dull voice.
We are what we feed our minds. If you constantly feed yourself lies and bad ideas about yourself, one day you WILL become those lies. Eventually, you will find yourself talking yourself out of your goals and experiencing only stressful moments.
9. Go out into nature
There’s nothing as refreshing as being in nature. The soft breeze that brushes your cheeks, the smell of earth, and visually mesmerizing green surroundings are enough to distract anyone from the daily hustle and bustle of life.
Now imagine taking out your self reflection kit in such a place. Wouldn’t it feel like something straight out of the movies?
The good news is that it’s not a far-fetched idea. Even if you cannot go out in the woods and experience that beautiful scenery, you can still create something similar at your home and practice self reflection.
Planting small shrubs and herbs on your balcony can be a good start. Watching those plants and nurturing them will relax your mind and help you think better.
Why is Self reflection Important?
Self reflection is the key to understanding yourself and the society better. Some significant benefits include:
1. Increased self-awareness
When you start practicing self reflection, you will find yourself asking several ‘why’ questions. It helps you search for the reason behind your emotions and behavior. Eventually, this habit nurtures your mind and increases your emotional intelligence.
You no longer find yourself confined to a single perspective. With a broader perspective, you now begin to look at situations from other’s perspectives too. This helps you become more self-aware and get a sense of control over your life. You gradually start shifting your focus on things that you CAN control.
2. Improved communication skills
Using a self reflection kit regularly makes you a thinker. When you come across any obstacle, you tend to think deeply. Self-reflection takes you beyond the surface and helps you understand all the aspects of a problem.
You become more compassionate and you become smart enough to understand the kind of tone and style that will get you along with your close ones. Thus, boosting your communication skills.
3. Deeper alignment with core values
When a person practices self reflection, they slowly start to align deeper with their core values. You start to evaluate your beliefs and analyze the loopholes. If those beliefs don’t satisfy you, you will try to get new information or modify your thought process.
This is how you constantly evolve without getting stuck in your daily routine. This also contributes to your lesser cognitive dissonance. In simpler terms, it reduces your sense of discomfort that comes when you are not aligned with your values.
4. Better decision-making skills
As your emotional intelligence grows stronger, you start to make better decisions. Rather than making decisions under the influence of your emotions, you weigh all the options and evaluate their effectiveness.
You start to consider the long-term goals and evaluate the impact a decision has on you and your loved ones. This way, it doesn’t matter what role you play, you can make decisions that nurture both you and the people around you.
5. Greater accountability
As you become more aware of yourself and your surroundings, you will analyze your behavior and responsibilities. You start to weigh the consequences of your actions and act thoughtfully.
This gradually makes you a more accountable person. So much so that when it comes to achieving your personal goals or common ones, you start to hold yourself responsible.
Conclusion
When practiced right, a self reflection kit becomes a doorway to happiness and joy. But when done wrong, it can result in negative self-talk, rumination, and self-judgment.
Therefore, it is essential to be mindful of your narratives. The key to a healthy and effective self reflection is developing a neutral and non-judgmental perspective.
Learn to be forgiving and gentle with yourself. It is the only way to grow healthy
