What Does It Mean To Be A Reflective Person?
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a reflective person as one who looks back on things they have said or done in order to think calmly and quietly about them.
Being a reflective person means you take the time to contemplate and analyze your thoughts, actions and experiences. It involves a willingness to question yourself, challenge your assumptions and seek a better understanding of yourself and the world.
Through introspection, a reflective person looks for insights and lessons in past experiences and uses them as a guide for present and future choices. This mindset is marked by open-mindedness, curiosity, a willingness to consider new perspectives and revise beliefs when faced with new information. It involves embracing the discomfort of self-examination, which leads to personal growth, empathy and a greater sense of self-awareness.
Why is this important?
The ability to impartially analyze our personal feelings, words, actions and interactions is essential to attaining self-awareness. It is our opportunity to be honest with our self without fear of judgement. An exercise of self-reflection can produce profound results:
1) Reduce anxiety and impulsive reactions, allowing for calmer, more thoughtful response sometimes even in the face of an emergency.
2) Improve relationships with people as we’re not prone to blurting out the first thing that comes to our head.
3) Better understanding of issues, as we take the time to research them and find out as much as we can before coming to a conclusion.
What it is not: It is sometimes easy to confuse despairing to being reflective, as we helplessly churn an issue over and over in our mind without a way forward. Reflective thinking is calm, analytical and progressive, with a view to improving self-awareness, skill and effectiveness.
Can we all be reflective people?
This certainly, is a goal we can all strife to achieve. Being a reflective person is not an innate trait, but rather a skill that can be developed with practice and intention. While it may be challenging for some to embrace this mindset initially, it is certainly possible for all of us to cultivate reflective habits.
A great starting point to becoming a reflective person, is by gradually engaging in meditative practices such as journaling, mindfulness exercises and seeking feedback from others, all of which helps us build control over our emotion. Ultimately, by making a conscious effort to continually learn and grow, we have the potential to become more reflective individuals.