Importance of self reflection and feedback from environment in learning and growth

Kashika Gulati, Counseling Psychologist, IWill

“When you stop growing, you start dying” is a famous quote by William S. Burroughs. Imagine living a life where you feel you know everything and there’s nothing more to explore! Sounds boring, doesn’t it? And well, a little bit of ‘know-it-all” too, and if I were to be completely honest, it’s a little stupid too! Just kidding, or not :p

Self reflection and feedback from environment are 2 ways to learn and grow. Investment in yourself can look like putting in efforts to understand yourself and asking for a constructive feedback from significant others. This is a great combination if one wants to succeed in life.

Awareness is the first step to change. If you aren’t aware of your patterns, your strengths and areas of improvement, life can be even more challenging to you. So, spending time with yourself, where you reflect on your actions, intentions and try to understand the contributing factors of the results can help you in ways nobody and nothing else can.

Some of the ways through which you can achieve that are:

 Journalling: Free writing or structured writing, whatever appeals to you better, is a great way to express your feelings and even understand your patterns.

 Meditation: Sitting with yourself and focusing on your breath everyday, where you let thoughts come and go, can really help practice stillness and inculcate calmness. It’s a great way to connect to your body and enhance your intuition.

 Reading: Reading books, especially self help books, can help a lot to aid your personal growth but only if you also apply those learnings in your life. Otherwise, it’s only as good as knowing a lot of things but not implementing, which honestly can be worse than not knowing at all.

 Assess your self talk: How you talk to yourself says a lot about your confidence and beliefs. So if you want to be aware of how you perceive yourself, monitor how you talk to yourself, especially when you are in challenging situations.

They key to self awareness is spending time with yourself and allowing yourself the comfort (or maybe, discomfort) of slowness. With the fast pace of world, we are used to doing something or the other, but mindfulness and conscious living is the skill to aspire for.

Another great way to learn and grow is by seeking feedback, such as from peers, mentors, or teachers. They can provide valuable information about how one's actions are perceived and can be used to make adjustments and fine-tune behavior. It’s always a good idea to ask for feedback from only those you trust, people who are also working on themselves, otherwise the feedback can have an opposite effect. If feedback is given in a constructive manner, where you understand what you are doing right, and what you need to work on, it can be the best push for you to grow.

Your growth curve will always be very different from others (even if it feels like they are at same place as you). So it’s a good idea to save yourself from the misery of comparing yourself to others, and really have fun with your growth, and well, life!