Do you take time out at the end of each day to reflect on how your day progressed? To evaluate how you navigated through the day’s challenges, to celebrate your victories, acknowledge your challenges and learn your lessons. If you believe in the power of reflection but don’t know which questions to ask, here are options for you to select from to reflect each day and consistently keep moving forward on your self-improvement journey.
Hello and welcome back to the deep dive series on the Being Meraklis podcast. I am Shwetha Sivaraman, your self-awareness coach, here to help you ask the right questions. Today, I will share 5 questions you can reflect on at the end of every day.
Reflecting at the end of the day is not some new concept or the “in” thing these days. Roman empires to philosophers over the centuries have praised the many benefits of self-reflection.
Seneca explains his daily ritual of examining his days, “When the light has been removed and my wife has fallen silent, aware of this habit that’s now mine, I examine my entire day and go back over what I’ve done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by.”
It doesn’t have to be a time-consuming affair; it doesn’t have to take longer than 5-10 minutes, but not sparing those few minutes can have consequences.
A recent Research in call centers demonstrated that employees who spent 15 minutes at the end of the day reflecting about lessons learned performed 23% better after 10 days than those who did not reflect.
Like Margaret J. Wheatley says, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
Reflecting helps us to intentionally plan our future path and action and live life more deliberately. So here are my top 5 questions to reflect on at the end of the day:
- Rate your day on a scale of 1-5 or the way I’m currently doing it -2 to 2. -2 for really bad, -1 for a little bad, 0 for neutral, 1 for a good day, 2 for a brilliant day. Make a few notes on what made it a 2 or -2 and ask yourself what made me come alive today? Over time this will help deepen self-knowledge and awareness on what makes someday a good day for you, and you can start to incorporate more of that.
- What are the best things that happened today? What did I do well? This helps us not overlook and acknowledge our wins.
- Where was there unnecessary struggle today? We often overcomplicate our lives with unwarranted effort. Asking ourselves where there was friction and exploring if there’s an easier way to deal with that helps us reduce such struggle in our lives.
- Did I make time for what’s important today? We spend a lot of time on urgent things, replying to that email, putting out fires in your colleague’s department, etc. But did you do what’s most essential for you – that could be taking care of your health, finances, spending quality time with your spouse, talking to your parents, spending time in stillness.
- What can I do better tomorrow? It’s not about crucifying yourself for what you did or didn’t do but gaining better clarity on how you can improve tomorrow.
The key is to move the needle one inch at a time. No need for drastic transformations, just inch by inch progress and self-improvement, and before you know it, you’ll be a whole other person.
Deep dive on these aspects, make time for self-reflection daily, and find answers within!
This is Shwetha Sivaraman signing off until we meet again, hoping you have a fabulous week ahead.