So this time of year is often a time of year where we start to reflect on what is behind us and prepare for what is to come.
And I,
Like pretty much everyone,
Probably have been doing a lot of that myself.
And I just kind of wanted to dig into this idea of reflection and how looking backward can actually help us move forward.
And I'll explain this.
So many of us think of reflection in connection to the past.
When we reflect,
We're looking back,
Like over different situations and experiences in our lives.
We're evaluating what happened,
We're analyzing the outcome,
Maybe we're considering what we might change in the future about how we responded,
Reacted,
Handled it,
You name it,
Right?
And so reflection really is a time of thought.
And a lot of times it ends up being a big part of meditation.
For many,
It's like the only time there isn't a whole bunch of noise.
So when we sit down to meditate,
For many of us,
It's like finally like quiet.
And that's when we start to hear all the little things going on in our mind a little bit more clearly or a little bit more a little bit louder,
Maybe.
So slowing down and creating space,
These moments of calm and peace opens the door to give thought and consideration to various things in our lives.
And a lot of times what happens is we have all the stressful things end up consuming our thoughts.
All the things that are overwhelming us are chattering away when we try to sit down and meditate.
So if you find yourself in this predicament,
I invite you to allow whatever comes to happen.
Let those thoughts come,
Let them be and see perhaps what you could learn from it.
Look at what you might be,
What might be able to help you in the future.
Then let it go.
Don't dwell on it.
Don't let it hold you back.
If you are thinking about a situation and you're learning a lesson from it,
Take that lesson,
Use that and then let go of that weight.
Let go of that thing that's nagging at you.
Let go of the weight on your shoulders from this situation.
Sometimes when we reflect,
We can get stuck on those things.
We can feel like it's dragging us down or holding us back and we just keep repeating that over and over.
And so it's really important to just let that go once you've taken some time to evaluate and reflect.
So obviously a good practice is meditation to find those places of quiet,
Those places of calm,
Like I mentioned.
But another good practice for reflection is to journal and to write things down.
Writing things down helps us have something to look back on over time.
It becomes a tool for us to see how things once were,
How we worked through different challenges,
How much we've grown.
Without writing things down,
It's really hard to remember just how much our life changes over time.
It's really easy to forget all the things that it took to get to this place.
It's so easy,
So easy to forget.
And so as we're writing things down,
We can look back over that and we can remember like,
Oh,
I went through this,
I had this challenge,
I overcame it and this is how I got to where I am.
Even if it's thinking back like a few months,
It's hard to recall all that's happened.
It's through this reflection,
Through this time of looking back that we can celebrate our accomplishments.
We can remind ourselves of everything that we're capable of,
Right?
So the art of reflecting is so empowering.
It's when we get stuck in that negative part of reflecting that those things that drag us down,
I didn't do this,
I did this wrong,
This was something I would change.
We get stuck there,
That's where we lose the power of it.
But if we recognize those things,
Learn from them,
Let go and move forward,
That's where the power comes from.
That's where we start to feel really empowered through reflecting.
You can see where we started,
Where we are now,
We can look forward to what's to come and it's through the consistent practice of reflection that we can really see what we have managed to achieve.
We can see the pieces and the parts of our lives that contributed to where we're at in this moment right now.
How the years,
How the months,
How weeks,
Days,
Minutes,
Like seconds add up over time to build the foundation of the journey that we're on.
Everything we are doing right now came from something that happened before.
So how the past can help us move forward,
We can use those things,
We can recognize all of the accomplishments that we've had over the course of time and we can use those lessons and those celebrations to help propel us forward,
To move us closer to our goals,
Our dreams and the things that we want to achieve.
So if you have not used meditation to help open the doors to reflecting,
If you have not used journaling to kind of keep track of where you've been and where you're going,
Then I encourage you to give that a try.
And if you need any support in that,
Please connect with me.
