One of the quotes which has always resonated with me is the following –
“Sometimes you have to look back, in order to see ahead.”
This quote really resonates with me because it’s true. When trying to develop yourself as a person in any area of your life, you need to be able to look back and see how you were in order to see the growth that you’ve made. You can’t make true progress without reflection because when you compare yourself to a past version of yourself, you will be able to see how far you’ve come. That’s how it works.
Act As The Athletes Do
When you think of athletes, getting better as an athlete is all about reflection. They are constantly comparing their times to when they did them previously. They reflect on how much they weighed, how they ran, all the challenges that they had to overcome. Athletes reflect on what they did before to achieve the best possible results and then they see how they can build on that. This is what we need to be doing in our own lives.
Building yourself involves a process of remembering how good or bad many of the experiences in your past were and using it to shape your future.
Never be ashamed of incidents in your past to the point that they affect how you go forward in the future. It’s in the past for a reason.
Yes indeed, I’m one of those people that thinks everything in your life happens for a reason because I believe in it. Experiences in your past are what build character which is important for personal development and building yourself, that is why I consider reflection as something which is very important for us to do.
Time And Experience Teaches Us All
Character is something that can only be built through time and experience but when you build your character, it’s always with you. Character affects your ability to be passionate, determined, tenacious, motivated, inspirational, focused; it gives you a purpose and reason behind everything that you do and put out into the world.
Many of the biggest success stories of people in the world and history started off from their stories and the purpose which they took from it, but it only came to fruition for them through reflection. Experiences in their past made them reflect on their own lives — they thought how they could use what they learnt to create something or do something in the world to create a difference, make their own situation better or help people like them in similar situations.
Every successful business person, athlete, singer etc you know has relevance with doing this. How could Steve Jobs be the innovator he was, how could Bill Gates create Microsoft or how could Michael Jordan be the greatest basketball player of all time if it wasn’t for their character and their past experiences molding their own future paths?
Character Is Like A Plant
I remember hearing something from Steve Harvey about this idea of character. He likened it to a flower or a plant. He said that when a plant starts off it’s a seed, if you just put the seed in the heat of the sun it would burn and die. However, with the process of planting a seed, you have to bury it in dirt — otherwise known as soil. Logic says that the dirt/soil will prevent the seed from sprouting, yet the seed fights through the soil, the soil gives it nutrients and with the help of nutrients and light, it breaks through and eventually becomes a healthy plant.
Did you take anything from that story? If you didn’t then I’ll make it clearer for you.
· The seed = You. Yourself growing up, going through the stages of life and generally just living. You want to grow and be a healthy plant one day (a better person, richer, more successful, happy), you dream of it, but for now you just want to focus on being the best seed (you) possible.
· The dirt / soil = Challenges. All through your life you find that you have challenges or ‘dirt’ put on you. Relationships, education, untrustworthy people, debt, etc. Unfortunately you will have to face some form of adversity in your life, you may have to struggle and fight and you may never feel like you can make it to be THAT successful plant that you want to be. You feel buried by all the dirt which has been put on you.
· The growth = You. All the challenges you have faced throughout your life (the dirt which has been put on you), has given you strength, nutrients, character. With the things you have been through you have the nutrients given to push through it all. Eventually you break through the soil. You get to the other side. You feel the light on you. You’ve made it. But you could have NEVER done it without that dirt and soil which buried you because it gave you something to fight through, it gave you hunger, it gave you motivation to make your situation better, it gave you a story to reflect on and use to create your success so you can share what you’ve learned with others.
What is Your Story?
This has been briefly touched on above but why I consider reflection to be one of the key elements of personal development is the idea of your story. Telling your story through what you put out into the world. Never be afraid of your story. Your story has the power to change someone else’s story.
I have seen time after time, after time, after time, people doing a blog or saying something in an interview or doing a YouTube video (which is all sharing personal stories and insights from their own life) and reading comments which says something like –
“This really changed my life, I was going through a situation just like this and I didn’t want to speak out about it. Now you’ve done it, I know I’m not alone. You’ve given me exactly what I needed to go forward with what I’m doing.”
Something like that is so powerful. Something which you might just put out as a random piece of content can have the power to transform someone’s life. Your words are important. Your story is important. Don’t ever feel that you are the only one going through what you’re going through, that your experiences are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You are unique but many of the things you will go through are not. This is why I say to cherish your memories and always reflect, because in that reflection may lie the key to changing someone else’s reality.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Simon Migaj on Unsplash