In this post:
I reflect on the purpose, execution, and desired results of a reflection.
I’ve done reflection posts before (see April ‘22, June ‘23, May ‘24), but after reading through each of them, it occurs to me that I have never explained more than “I’m reflecting.”
In chats with my friends, the idea that people do not seem to reflect often has come up multiple times. We think reflecting and attaining self-awareness is important (see the last 6 posts, starting with February!).
So, in this post, I intend to share thoughts about reflection.
…A reflection on reflection, if you will.
In thinking about reflection, this post answers the following questions:
What is reflection?
Why should we reflect?
How might we reflect?
What is reflection?
Reflection can be a lot of different things. Humanity has expended, currently expends, and will indubitably continue to expend human lifetimes pondering reflection itself. Just searching Wikipedia for reflective practice will crush you with information.
For our sake, we will consider the simplest definition of Reflection as the action of examining experiences. It gets more complicated from there.
For example, I can examine my experience between the start and end times of my evaluation period. As an Air Force captain in 2025, that’s now 1 September – 31 August of every year.
We could each examine our entire high school experience. We could make a nuanced reflection specific to friendships, personal aspirations, academic performance, times we ate pizza, romantic interactions, etc.
We can reflect on specific projects.
We can also examine our observations of others. History classes pretty much embody this form of reflection.
But why and how might we reflect on any of these things in particular?
Sticking to the examples above:
The point of reflecting is to see reality from a somewhat distanced perspective; try to see things that might not have been apparent during the experience itself.
Specifically, I could try answering the following questions:
“Did I accomplish what I set out to do? Maybe if milestones were not met, were any inchstones accomplished?”
If you’re like me, you likely have a strong sense that effort alone does not have value, but success does. Some projects, however, take years to be realized as complete, let alone successful or failed. Reflecting on progress can help with recognizing that just because something is not fully complete does not mean that nothing has been accomplished.
“Did the goals make sense?”
Sometimes, we get tasks without the full context. We know something needs to be done about some situation, but not knowing the particulars doesn’t always prevent Getting Started. Hopefully, reflection happens sooner than a year after starting. Taking time to ask this question can help align your undertaking with solid rationale before you veer way off the intended or desired path.
“Did the goals change? How? Why?”
Maybe the goal made sense at the time, but maybe new information caused changes in the goal itself, or changed the options or other context that required not-so-obvious changes on your part.
“Did I change? Did I identify the need to learn specific new skills? Did I make progress toward attaining those skills?”
Maybe the goals didn’t change, but you were not prepared for the challenge at the onset of pursuing those goals. Did you know that was the case or did you press forward anyway?
If you don’t take the time to think about your actions, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, etc., then how do you make changes for the better?
This doesn’t even scratch the surface, really, but it’s a decent starting point that could prompt questions about reflecting.
Funny enough, my takeaway at the end of this month is that if I intend to do a reflection post, I need to do it pretty quickly. A lot can and did happen in a month…
72 Airman's Writings 