Reflect Reflect & Reflect

The classic google search on word reflect shows “throw back without absorbing”.

What I want to talk about today is about the other meaning “to think deeply or carefully about”. Similar to how a mirror shows what’s kept in front of it due to reflection of light.

So, what does reflecting mean?

Take a moment sit back and run through how you spend your last day in your mind. List down things you liked to do and helped you & things that did not.

What you just did was a reflecting.

Why do we need to reflect?

To see how things actually happened as against what you planned in your mind: If the reason for variation is an external factor like this pandemic then you need to adapt to the change. If it is due to something you dint do now you know what needs to be done.

To analyze your mistakes and errors in judgement: Things go wrong all the time and that’s the nature of design because if everything well we won’t learn or change. When you reflect you give yourself a chance to change how you think and act in similar situation in the future.

To improve quality of decision making: See the pattern of your behavior i.e. decisions you make under particular circumstance. Chances are if you don’t do this, you’re doomed to make the same error.

To appreciate yourself for the right you did: We don’t take time to reflect on good that’s happened to us and don’t acknowledge it. Taking a moment to appreciate it might make you happy and help you understand what works for you.

To know yourself better:

“My friend…care for your psyche…know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves” – Socrates (Greek philosopher)

Single biggest weapon one has to fight in the modern world is knowing yourself. No matter how much you know about yourself there is more to know. Reflect to know how you feel, act and perform tasks.

As famously said in the stock markets “you mind would be your best friend and your worst enemy”, it is difficult to create wealth without knowing yourself.

Let me share another case where I have immensely benefited from reflecting. In the past 4-5 odd months since the pandemic started taking toll on us we had a lot of time in hand.

Naturally first 2 months I spent on getting hang of things out of my control. The remaining time every single day I have spent on reflecting whatever I did in the past and things that I read of.

I scribbled on paper about things and decisions made. Wrote to give shape to my thoughts and to be more accountable of my actions. I still don’t know a lot of things but I am set on the path of knowing thyself which helps me in better writing, decision making and being a better person.

On an ending note let me share one my tweets:

“Reading is overrated, reflecting is underrated. Unless you reflect on your thoughts about what you read it’s difficult to learn from what you read. Reflect, reflect and reflect”.

Comments

Back to Basics

A few basic ideas which I wish to reiterate to myself as they contain wisdom to think and become better. Embracing lifelong learning : If there’s one thing that should not stop no matter what situation you’re in, it is learning. Could be through reading books, watching videos, etc. The day we stop learning we almost stop growing. Reading opens up your brain, gives you a larger repository of knowledge to take information from, and a better reference point to think about. Time with Self : You’re going to spend the most time in this world with yourself, in your mind. You have to make sure it is a good place to be otherwise you won’t be happy. Things happen so effortlessly when you’re happy that nothing feels like a task. The way to improve your time with yourself is through reflecting on your thoughts as they eventually turn into actions and habits. Needless to say, it will help you know thyself better. Routine : One of the most important traits of any successful human being on eart...

Pattern Seeking Brain

“I gained because I knew this” “I had told you so” “I told you, stock X is going to double” “I knew this is going to happen, had predicted it long back correctly” What is one common thing you can sense in all the above remarks? The need to control, which stems from the need to predict and to create a narrative. Our brain is wired in a way that it needs to seek patterns in past events, analyze new information or events, and categorize them in accordance with past events. A narrative creating machine that we are, we find a correlation between the most random events which have the remotest possibility of being correlated. Let me explain, say you bought shares of Tesla. Is it suppose to obey you and rise in price because you bought it? The stock has no clue and is not even interested in knowing who bought it. Hell, it should ideally not even move just because Elon Musk tweets something. But it has moved in recent times whenever he has tweeted. Now there are two pos...

Are you Biased - 2

This is in continuation of series on biases. Here’s the link for you to quickly go through previous post. Before we discuss another set of biases again what does being biased mean? Strong inclination towards or against some idea without reasonable basis for the same. Write down your answer to WHY and you might catch yourself being biased more often than not. · Over Influence by Liking Tendency : Remember when you bought a product just because your favorite star advertised it? I remember purchasing Too Yum (Indian snack brand) because Virat Kohli endorsed it. Marketing companies use this trick almost always to sign up superstars to increase sales of their clients. We get lured into buying irrespective of whether we need the product or not. It is no different in the stock markets. Retail investors often buy because a well-known successful investor bought a stock without knowing about the business prospects or having co...

Connecting the dots

Search This Blog