The Art Of Reflective Thinking: How To Gain Insight From Daily Experiences

By Author: Chaitanya Kumari
Total Articles: 21
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In today’s fast-paced life, we often forget the art of reflective thinking. We tend to do and say things instantly for gratification without thinking even once about the impact of it on others. Also, we fail to learn from such incidences, proving our insensitive nature. We need to be reminded about the art of reflective thinking, which can clarify our thoughts and enrich our minds by stopping us from making the same mistake.

To understand reflective thinking that leads to deeper understanding, you first know about reflection. By definition, it is a process that influences your knowledge of self. Introspection means diving deep within you to have a better understanding of yourself. In India, Yoga and meditation are often connected with knowledge wherein you quieten the chaos in your mind to achieve mindfulness and peace. Introspection will make you ask questions like what and how you think.

Reflective thinking often requires you to pause for a moment, take in the present, and think about your experiences and how you process them. We are in an age of information where we do not have time to reflect on our thoughts ...
... but are expected to process a chunk of information within seconds. Chaos is created in our minds leads us to make harmful choices, and wrong decisions and suffer from harsh consequences. Reflection on our actions gives us the time to understand the difference between right and wrong, thus steering us toward the right decision.

Journaling Techniques To Fuel Self-Reflection
Journaling is hailed as an effective self-reflection technique as it is personal. We gain insights about various situations and ourselves through deep reflective thinking. Journaling is an art that you can imbibe in your daily life. It helps develop those insights. All those thoughts and emotions you generally find difficult to express can be easily written in your journal, which then becomes tangible. The tangibility of those emotions and thoughts in a private space without fear of repercussions and judgments can be liberating. This liberation clears the entangled thoughts and complex emotions we feel at any moment.

Just make a habit of journaling your thoughts every day without worrying about sentence construction. Your journal needs to be spontaneous and simple. Also, be honest with your feelings. Put them down in your journal. Use the journaling technique to express complex thoughts and also use it to express positive thoughts and gratitude. When you start expressing gratitude in your life, you begin to gain wisdom. Self-reflection makes you shed the burden of negativity and embrace the positive emotions inside you.

Being mindful of positive vibes is a way to feel infinite happiness. The moment you shake off the negative emotions, you will gain wisdom about a particular situation, and by regular practice, you would have gained insights into your life, to make it better. Also, help others to make their lives better.

Eastern traditions of self-reflection
While journaling is a western method, the focus of eastern civilizations has been about using the art of meditative thinking for reflection. Unlike normal thinking, there is a preparation before doing meditative thinking that helps in maintaining objectivity. Doing breathing exercises to calm down, focus on de-personalization and cultivating objectivity as part of the preparation has a positive effect. The positive effect helps to think calmly. Then, to use the information or feedback to re-assess expectations, re-examine the expected outcomes, and consider alternate methods to solve the issues at hand. So eastern self-reflection traditions can help to come with intuitive and out of box thinking for finding solutions.

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