top of page

Exploring the Company we Keep - with Ourselves! (With 4 Impactful Self-Reflection Exercises)

Writer's picture: Laura Hope GoldstoneLaura Hope Goldstone

I love yoga. I find it calming yet refreshing; relaxing yet revitalizing. I have two go-to sources for yoga videos on YouTube: Denise Austin (my long-time fitness idol) and a newer find for me - Yoga with Adriene. (I know she has steadily built a yoga empire over the years and truly is the real deal - but I personally only learned about her maybe a year ago or so!) Denise Austin is the queen of positivity; I could only wish to be that happy and energetic all the time! And Adriene is great as well. A friend recommended Adriene's videos to me, and she's now my default source of morning yoga, feel-good vibes, and calming breathwork. Something Adriene often says in her videos is that the quality of our relationship with ourselves influences the quality of our relationships with everyone and everything else around us.


And I think that's an idea worth reflecting on.


Starting Within - Filling Your Own Cup


I'm sure we've all heard the old adage that you can't pour from an empty cup. The idea is that you have to fill your own cup before you can fill others'. We have to take care of ourselves so we can do more of what makes us happy, unlock paths to contentment, explore what keeps us calm and at peace vs. what activities we find fun and energizing, and craft a life that makes us feel fulfilled.


And before we can fill our cup, we have to know how to fill it. This involves getting to know ourselves a little bit. In the realms of emotional intelligence and leadership, self-awareness is a cornerstone practice that paves the way for unlimited possibilities thereafter. You can figure out how to express yourself, convey certain emotions or ideas, connect with others, deal with conflict, empathize with others, and make better decisions if you practice self-awareness first.


You have to fill your own cup before you can use it to fill others'. And before you can fill your cup, you have to know how to fill it. A little reflection will go a long way and will pave the way for unlimited possibilities thereafter.

Reflection doesn't have to be scary. A lot of people find self-reflection daunting. They think it might be too revealing and they're not prepared to face certain realizations head-on. Or maybe they think it's boring and they just want to move on to more exciting things. Or perhaps they simply don't know where to start or how to do it or what it looks like. These are all valid points, but I'd argue not a single one is a good enough reason not to do it. Sorry! Let's rip the Band-aid off together and dive right in!


The Inward Mirror - The Power of Self-Reflection


When we take a mirror up to ourselves and look within, we can better understand who we are (and why). This understanding is so powerful - it will fuel improvements in such areas as:

  • communication

  • self-expression

  • connection

  • empathy

  • conflict resolution

  • decision-making

  • career pathing

  • personal growth


and so much more. Maybe your goal isn't to fill other people's cups - and that's okay. You still deserve the ability to fill your own. And that may mean you have to do a little work to get there, but hopefully the work is enjoyable and illuminating and freeing.


In order to look at that inward-facing mirror, you have to hold it up to yourself. You have to want to look within. And you have to make sense of what you see.


Crafting the life you want begins with you. That thought is meant to be empowering - not daunting. You have more control than you think you do. You may not have control over what happens to you, but you have control over how you react to it. Developing a stronger relationship and a deeper connection to your thoughts, emotions, and feelings will help you react to things in a more constructive way based on the way you want to live your life.


Lessons from Emotional Intelligence


While pursuing my Master's in Leadership, I took a course in emotionally intelligent leadership that changed my life. I felt seen and validated, I uncovered the topic I wanted to become central to the rest of my career, and I learned SO much from every single framework, concept, activity, assignment, paper, discussion, and lecture. I wished everyone in the world could take that course. I truly believe we'd all be better - individually and as a society - if we worked to develop our emotional intelligence more effectively!


Many of the frameworks and concepts in the emotional intelligence course - which I've studied, applied, and evolved since - increase self-awareness and can be applied in a variety of situations, from your personal growth to your path to becoming a better leader at work.


Let's start with a few key concepts that can help you deepen your understanding of your self.


Ego Ideal


Picture yourself at a holiday dinner at your house. It's a few years in the future. Everyone you love most is seated around the table. Suddenly, you stand up. Everyone looks at you. You're nervous but you're filled with an unbridled excitement you can barely contain. You can't help but smile as you tell everyone you're about to share some very exciting news with them. You have achieved something that means so much to you personally, and now you get to tell everyone.


What news do you share?


(Fill in the blank) "________________."

This practice can help you envision a goal or objective or milestone in your life that you would love to achieve.

Key elements:

  • Limit yourself to one piece of news (for now)

  • No judgment - this has to mean a lot to you regardless of others' opinions

  • The possibilities are endless - it can even be something outlandish or seemingly impossible

  • Should be an event or milestone - something concrete

  • Can be anything - you don't even need to be working towards it yet


This imaginal exposure allows you to picture the scenario with the goal already having been achieved. You can feel the happiness and pride as you share this exciting news with the people you love most. This excitement can translate into motivation to take action.


Questions for reflection:

  • How did it make you feel when you imagined having achieved that goal?

  • How can you bring that self into being? What is the first step you can take?

  • What are you already doing today that will help you make that dream a reality?


Now, what we have done is we have whittled down what's called the "ego ideal" into a singular goal. Your ego ideal is your personal idea of perfection, or the apex of what you want to be as a person. The difference between your ego ideal and a goal is that a goal is one singular task to achieve, whereas the ego ideal is often viewed as more of an image of yourself that captures you in the ideal manner you wish to be seen.


Academically speaking, your ego ideal is more holistic than the one event we have just pictured. It also might be loftier and more widely reaching. Your ego ideal captures your ideal life - your definition of perfection for yourself. But this activity of picturing one important event can give you an idea of what to strive for. It can help you identify something that will actually matter deeply to you. Starting at the end - with success achieved, with something lofty and important and substantial - can be more effective than traditional goal-setting, which usually starts at the beginning with a task you can achieve now. Picturing your ego ideal - the pinnacle of success in your eyes - can help you identify what you truly care about. Then you can create a series of goals to help you get there.


For example...


For example, when we did this activity in class, I said my news at the dinner table was that I had just published a book.


--> When you extrapolate that idea outward into a broader sense (more towards the academic definition of Freud's concept of the ego ideal), I'd say I want to be an author.

Then I can ask myself, Why do I want to want to be an author?

  • I love to write.

  • I love to tell stories and to teach.

  • I love to be a resource and an authority/expert on certain topics.

  • I envision the life of an author as being fulfilling and inspiring and allowing me to do work I'm passionate about while also enjoying work-life balance.

As you can see, the goal of publishing a book has led me to the ego ideal of being an author. The difference is subtle but important. Publishing a book is a goal; being a successful, published author is an ideal image for myself. Publishing a book is a step that will lead me toward living the life of a successful, published author. It is a goal along the way to my ideal vision for myself.


<-- On the flip side, I can start with my news - I had just published a book - and work inward, leading me to a more specific plan: If I want to publish a book, I need to start writing. I need to have something to write about. But writing can be challenging, and it requires discipline, and it can fall by the wayside if I don't make time for it, so I'll need a plan, and the appropriate tools and environment, and maybe an incentive or accountability or something to keep me motivated.


Now we're refining the goal into a plan, made up of specific tasks. This will make this goal attainable, and will make my ego ideal of being an author closer to becoming a reality.


One note about the ego ideal, at least in its psychological terms, is that it is always out of reach. When we look more specifically at the goal application, I might ask myself: What if I publish a book? What next? My life isn't perfect once I check that box. (Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking if we just achieve this one objective, we'll be happy. Similarly, achieving one goal won't make my life complete. It's an ongoing process, and happiness isn't the goal - it has to be found during and within.) To use a football metaphor, the first down chains are going to move out ten yards. There will be something else for me to aspire toward. There will always be another goal on the horizon to strive for. This is because perfection doesn't exist. We need to recognize that perfection is an illusion, and to instead embrace life in its messy, meandering ways. Identifying your ego ideal isn't meant to cause disenchantment with your current life. This activity serves to help you identify the person you wish to become and to set you on a concrete path toward achieving a goal that is meaningful to you.



self-reflection


Self-awareness


In emotional intelligence, self-awareness encompasses your ability to recognize, understand, and regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. If you are aware of how you feel and why you feel that way, you can act in a more constructive manner, make better decisions, and communicate in a way that resonates more deeply with others. If you don't know how you feel, or if you don't know why you feel a certain way, your emotions are ruling you, and you aren't able to use them in a way that is constructive. Putting in the time to reflect on your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors will help you use them in a way that works well for you.


Let's do a few activities that will help us practice some self-awareness.


Identity


Name the five roles you embody right now in your life. I tend to have teams and classes complete this exercise using nouns. I want to see what you come up with on your own, so I'll hold my personal example until after we go through yours. Don't overthink it. Go with your gut.


Now, remove one. You're left with four.

Now, remove another one. You have three roles left.


Now, remove another. (This one might sting.) You're down to just two.


Can you remove one more? (Ouch.) You'll be left with one final role.


This activity can feel excruciating. It may be challenging to name five roles you hold to begin with, but as you take each one away, you'll feel difficulty in choosing which one should leave. It'll be hard for you to decide which one stays.


Here's my example:

  1. Wife

  2. Daughter

  3. Sister

  4. Leader

  5. Writer


I won't tell you how I toiled over which one to remove each round until I was left with one. It felt impossible. I bet you understand.


If your roles were similar to mine, you can't imagine one leaving. Maybe you can remove ones that have to do with your work and keep the ones that have to do with your family. That's why the first one or two removals hurt but aren't as painful as later rounds. But when you're left with wife, daughter, and sister, how can you remove one? How can you remove all but one?


This exercise will teach you what matters most to you. A hierarchy will form. You'll identify which roles are peripheral versus which roles are more core, more central to your being. You'll see which parts of you are most deeply embedded into your identity.


For the most part, when you're doing this activity, you can choose. It's imaginary, so you don't have to deal with the repercussions if tomorrow you think about it again and think you should swap two of them. The hard part is that in life, you can't always choose what happens around you or what roles you are thrust into. But you can choose how deeply they matter to you and how you behave. And that's the point.


You could also try doing this activity with adjectives. How do you describe yourself? Follow the same process, starting with five, then whittling it down to one if you can. You'll see which traits matter most to you and are most central to your identity.


Another note is that this changes. I don't want to be morbid, but family does change over time. Notice that I don't have granddaughter on my list anymore. Years ago, I would have. And while I'm always a granddaughter at heart, my grandparents are no longer with us, so I need to put another role on my list that takes up more space in my life today. As a lighter example, consider the role of "student." When I was getting my MBA, I had "student" on my list. While I believe in being a lifelong learner, once I graduated I removed "student" in favor of a role that more accurately captured my work at the time. Your roles may shift over time. But your identity is a bit more stabilized. Some roles are just positions you hold, while others are deeply rooted in who you are. This exercise will help you see that in action.


Covey's Mental Maps


We hold two mental maps:

  1. The way things are

  2. The way things should be


By exploring our mental maps, we can compare our realities to our values. We can see what's fact - the reality of the world around us, the situation we're in, the dynamics of the scenario - against what we wish could be. So often we want things to be a certain way, and we get frustrated when reality falls short against our heightened expectations. By considering the way things are vs. the way we want things to be, we can separate our wishes/visions/rose-colored glasses from the realities/facts/data. Then we can make the facts work for us, and we can either come to terms with the fact that things will never be the way we wish they could be or we can start working towards making that vision a reality.


This is an especially helpful exercise to perform during a challenging situation. When you can't understand how you feel about something, you can separate out the way you want it to be ("but I wish...!") from the way it truly is (actions, facts, events). Then you can regulate any emotions that might be swaying you or working against you, and you can deal with the facts in a more objective manner.


Worldview


We all carry with us a set of beliefs, values, and attitudes. These elements contribute to the assumptions we make about the world around us. And they contribute to our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.


Every moment we experience is made up of every moment that came before it. The thoughts I'm having right now are influenced by my previous experiences. The thoughts I'm having right now are influenced by the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors I had before - the repercussions and successes, the questions and answers, the fears and dreams. We all make assumptions about the world around us based on these beliefs, values, and attitudes that we hold. I won't dive too deeply into each one here, but first acknowledging that they exist is a big step. Next, considering what they are will help you work towards using them in a positive way in your life.


In any given situation, you might ask yourself:

  • What beliefs do I hold about this topic? What new information might challenge those beliefs and add to my perspective?

  • Is this in line with my values? Am I acting in a way that is congruent with my values? What values do I care about most? How can I act in a way that is more aligned with my values?

  • How is my attitude toward this topic or person impacting my behaviors? How can I approach this with a better attitude?

  • What assumptions am I making? Are they helpful? Could they be wrong? Could I look at this in a more positive light, or with more open-mindedness?


One of my favorite topics is values. I'm a very values-driven person and try to act with integrity at all times. Sometimes it is challenging, but as long as I am aware and trying and reflective, that's all I can ask of myself. You might be similar. Or you might not know this about yourself yet. Reflection will help you understand your beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions, which will help you use them in a more constructive way as you move through life.


There are so many more topics and frameworks and activities I could explore with you, but I think this is a great start. Try these exercises and see what you learn! You might just surprise yourself. I hope you find something new and positive and exciting that will help you feel better about yourself so that you can find happiness in the little moments and contribute to society in a meaningful way.



self-reflection

11 views0 comments

コメント


©2020-2024 Storyhaven by Laura Goldstone.

bottom of page