In many aspects of your life, reflection can help you grow and discover more about yourself. You can make wiser decisions, improve your relationships with others, and gain insight into your own underlying motivations by using self reflection questions.
You can develop your ability to reflect on your emotions and experiences in a way that leads to a more fulfilling existence by going over the reflection questions.
Being conscious of your surroundings and inner being is facilitated by reflection.
It’s a method to learn more about yourself and lets you change as necessary. Consider examining your ideas, feelings, routines, and behaviours face-to-face in a mirror. Envision yourself gazing at your thoughts, emotions, routines, and habits in the mirror with an open mind.
Self knowledge is a key component to finding success in every single area of life. It gives you the ability to look at yourself objectively, with clarity and empowers you to be in control of your destiny.
It necessitates accepting responsibility for your deeds and reflecting on them by asking yourself questions. People who are self aware know themselves and are clear of their strengths and being honest about their limitations.
Shadow Work is the Result of Asking Hard Reflection Questions
Consider starting with more basic questions and easing into the experience if you have never done shadow work before. The following inquiries are meant to assist novices in asking reflection questions:
- Which fundamental beliefs guide me? Do I live by them?
- How does fear or anxiety make me feel physically?
- Do those in my immediate vicinity share my values?
- When do I get the hardest on myself?
- What would I say about myself? Does my description match what other people would say?
- What triggers my self-consciousness?
- Do I often put myself in danger?
- Can you recall a period of time when I lacked self-compassion? Why?
- Do I genuinely adore who I am? How would it feel to love yourself more?
- What causes me to feel bad? Is this how I should genuinely feel, or was this idea imposed on me by someone else?
Reflection & The Ego
Self awareness signposts the way to having a healthy relationship with your ego and a buoyant self esteem. Having self awareness gives you an opportunity to get a good measure of who the true self is, enabling you to nurture a healthy rounded ego.
When you are self aware you are clear of how you are feeling and in what ways they are tethered to your thoughts. It allows you to understand where your emotions and thoughts are being stored in the body.
Self awareness will make you aware in the moment about an activity that you are doing out of habit, that no longer serves you.
What Is a Reflection Question?
It is the ability to be honest with yourself and to be void of any self delusion. Self reflection comes by having integrity as it requires brutal honesty to be able to be reflective.
Reflection can make you less reactive as you become aware of the interconnectedness between your thoughts, actions and emotions.
Having self awareness is the beginning of true wisdom. When you are self aware you can assess your emotions objectively. Turn your triggers into your messengers by observing the message objectively.
By tuning into our hidden nature we can learn to master our emotions. By becoming self aware you pay attention to your emotions dispassionately. When strong emotions come on like intense anger, or guilt you can break your patterns by becoming conscious of them.
Why Do People Lack Self Awareness?
People lack self awareness when they are not being true to themselves. People who lack self awareness find it easier to blame things outside of themselves for their pain. Those that lack accountability are not able to see themselves clearly. A lack of self awareness can happen to varying degrees as a person that may be self aware in some areas may lack self awareness in others. This happens when something becomes trapped in their blindspot.
Self awareness and shadow work
When emotions are too intense we have a tendency to stuff them back down in order to stay safe, unfelt emotions then remain in our shadows. Unfortunately, this defence mechanism will inevitably strengthen our shadow self. The shadow self is an amalgamation of all the parts of us that we are uncomfortable facing and feeling.
When the shadow self is not faced it lashes out hurting us and sabotaging the relationships in our life. Facing the shadow self, requires a lot of courage as the goal is to bring self awareness to the parts of ourselves that are the most vulnerable. It feels counter intuitive to reach into the places in ourselves where we are hurting. Paradoxically when it comes to the shadow and self awareness the only out in is in.
How Do You Build Self Awareness?
Asking reflection questions requires you to face truths about yourself in order to grow more in self awareness. Here are some practical tips to become more self aware
- Remain open minded – things may come up that feel off, unacceptable or that you want to turn away from
- When strong emotions are felt, remain calm, objective and dispassionate
- Listen to the messages that you’ve been unconsciously feeding into – you are witnessing the hold of your limiting belief systems
- Remain conscious by reminding yourself that whatever story your emotion is trying to tell, it is simply that. Do not believe the story that the wound has been telling you by not identifying with the story
- Pinpoint where in your body that you are experiencing the story, is it in your stomach, in your legs, in your head? The more specific you can be, the more clear you can be about what medicine to apply
- Hold space for the wound for as long as is needed but do not identify with the pain. Most of the time just acknowledging your wounds objectively is exactly the medicine that your wounds need
- Stay with the process until you feel the pain to begin to soften – this is self compassion
- Make a decision that from this point on, you are going to be telling yourself a new story about who you are.
Societal Conditioning
We have all been conditioned by society to varying degrees and therefore all have programs that are running. You may not be aware of the programs that you are running and the way that your programming aka “conditioning” has shaped your character. However knowing this is crucial as your character ultimately informs your destiny. If you have taken inventory of your life and have decided that you want a different outcome, then it’s important that you learn self awareness.
By becoming self aware we deactivate the programs that have been unconsciously running our lives and we can begin to taste true freedom. When you have no self awareness, the choices that you make are not truly born of freedom. It is the conditioned self that is at the wheel and you are controlled by your conditioned responses.
If you have a goal that you dream of making a reality one day, self awareness will be the compass that can steer you in the right direction.
In order to have something that you’ve never had, you’ve got to become someone you’ve never been
Les Brown
Conclusion
The more accountable you become, the more self awareness grows within you. Be accountable by asking yourself tough questions.
Listen to your anger, your guilt, jealousy, your shame, every emotion has a purpose to inform you about something that you might be missing. If you want to experience true peace, happiness and love in your life then set your compass to joy and let self awareness guide you towards a more fulfilling destiny by acknowledging your full range of emotions.
By tuning into our hidden nature we can learn to master our emotions. By becoming self aware you pay attention to your emotions dispassionately. When strong emotions come on like intense anger, or guilt you can break your patterns by becoming conscious of them.
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