The Value of Reflection
Summary
Using reflection as a tool for a life well-lived. Using times of pause, times of reflection, to aide us on our journey towards a full and meaningful life.The Union Path Podcast - The Value of Reflection
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There can be a lot of pressure around achievement. This pressure can come from within ourselves, this pressure can come from outside of ourselves, this pressure can be a habit. Especially in American culture, it can be really easy to slip into overvaluing and over prioritizing achievement. Getting into a mode where we're constantly working to get things done, make things happen. Where we're most often acting out of a place of will, out of force, and missing opportunities to be an act from a place of allowing.
And when we start trying to force too much, when we start trying to push too much, when we over prioritize what we've done rather than what we're doing, we can really start to slip away from awareness. We can really start to overly focus and overly value achievement, and lose our moment to moment awareness of our own being. We can start to believe that we are the sum of our achievements. We are the aggregate of what we get done, and lose the awareness of ourselves, our expression of our own being.
That in our culture we can really fetishize success, success determined from an accounting of achievement, what we've actually been able to accomplish. And we take these accomplishments and we add them up, and we take into account how much we've accomplished both in quantity of accomplishments,
as well as how many things we've been able to move around and use this as a basis of a self rating, of a self-assessment, that we are what we get done.
And on one way of looking at it, this makes a lot of sense. In that, this is really a simplified and accessible way to look at our own lives because it can be measured. When processed through the logical part of ourselves, it makes sense we would focus on the quantifiable, that we would focus on the data of achievement.
But obviously if we're working towards and moving towards living a full life, living a life we actually want, living a life imbued with qualities like joy and happiness and peace and meaning, when living a life that actually is good and feels good, feels like us, feels like ours. I think with even a moderate amount of self-awareness, we realize achievements don't really tell the whole story. That productivity is a really shaky indicator to a life well lived.
And one of the times that I think this gets particularly challenging are in times of pause, times where not much is really happening. We're not really getting much done. We seem to take one step forward and then another step back. Or we seem to try different options and none of them really seem like they're leading anywhere.
In these times it's really easy to feel stuck, it's really easy to feel stymied and frustrated. But is that the whole story? Is that the truth? To look at another way, what if instead we could harness these times of pause as opportunities for reflection?
In our go, go, go, do, do, do society, reflection doesn't really get a lot of credit, doesn't really get a lot of attention, doesn't really get a lot of esteem. But I think to experience a life well lived, reflection is critical. Because reflection brings awareness. Awareness brings consciousness, and consciousness not only drives behavior, but is what we process all of our "achievements" through.
Consciousness is at the root of everything. Not only in what we do and why, but also what the experience of life is like for us. How things that happen to us or don't happen to us affect us.
And so when we're in one of these pause times, when we're faced, often reluctantly sometimes, with times of reflection, I think it's really important to shift our perspective into learning to value these times.
Yeah, they may not be as bright and shiny as amazing achievement, but it doesn't mean they're not vital. It doesn't mean that these times aren't an opportunity. An opportunity to do all sorts of things, to get to know ourselves better, to know our lives better, to know what actually matters to us, what actually makes us feel good, what we're pursuing, and if those things we're pursuing we even want, are even good.
It seems to be kind of the alchemy of life. Of doing things and then reevaluating the value of what we've just done. Looking at our lives from the lens of what we've done up until now and what we want to do going forward.
And in times of pause, through bringing awareness to what's happened and what is happening, we can start to notice the need or the desire for shifts, even subtle shifts. We can use these times of reflection as an opportunity for refinement, as an opportunity to actually get better at doing what we're doing. To increase our skill and ability to pursue what we actually want.
That one way of looking at it these times can be profoundly helpful. Because in our pursuits, in our endeavoring, the more clarity, the more clear and focused intention we can bring to not only what we're doing , but why we're doing it, tends to make things better. Tends to make the pursuit easier, tends to lessen things like confusion and frustration.
By using reflection, we can really get clear on the path we're walking. But even if conceptually we can learn to value reflection, it doesn't make it easy, especially when there are stakes, especially when there's pressure, it can be really hard to intentionally pause.
It can be really hard to not just reflexively jump into doing something, anything, just to keep moving. There seems to be something inherent in the human animal that really distrusts stagnation, that really distrust stopping. That oftentimes we can feel so much better if we can just keep moving. That almost, it doesn't really matter what we're doing as long as we seem to be making progress towards something, but are we though?
For myself, I look back at the times where I've been the busiest, where I've done the most, I wasn't really that efficient. I didn't actually get a lot of really worthwhile things done, just because I was going too fast, I was doing too much. I was diluting the impact and effectiveness of what I was doing by sheer velocity.
I was slowly losing the thread on what I was doing and why. I got so wrapped up in getting things done, but I started to lose touch on what I was actually doing. What I was actually doing, not from a task perspective, but from a living and being perspective.
I was veering off into tangents, I was doing things that didn't actually matter, or weren't really ready yet. It seemed that I'd lost a bit of my skill of moving through life. I was moving through in a much more haphazard and almost clumsy way. But that's a hard thing, right? That's a hard thing to intentionally not do things. That's a hard thing to intentionally pause. To pause when we're not doing it out of fear. When we're not doing it out of some sense of mistrust with what's happening or where we're going. To actually pause from a confident, intentional, authentic place, is challenging.
But it doesn't need to be hard. It's only hard because we make it hard. It's only difficult because we put so many standards and expectations on achievement, on moving, on rapidity, on accumulation of accomplishment.
But these values are just ideas. These are things that either we've made up ourselves, or that we've absorbed from the people around us, the people that we listen to. And oftentimes, it takes reflection, it takes pausing to actually know whether these things are good or not. Whether these are things that we really ought to be doing right now. Whether these things are actually important.
Reflection can really be a gift, can really be something where we realize really important awareness that we wouldn't have been able to have gotten any other way. That when it comes to taking action, when it comes to doing things, the best action, the best things to do, are the things that flow out of a sense of authenticity, a sense of truth.
And again, it can be really easy to lose our grip on authenticity and truth when we're trying to go too fast, when we're trying to do too much. It really is a pretty advanced skill to be able to intentionally pause. To intentionally say, you know, I just don't think there's really anything worthwhile to do right now. So what I'm going to do is reflect. What I'm gonna do is really take in everything I can about where I'm going, what I'm doing, what I want.
And I think one of the things that's the hardest about learning to reflect, learning to pause, is there's just so few influences in our culture that even share the value of this idea.
Again, oftentimes it's quite the opposite. That if we notice someone not really doing anything, at the very least, it's peculiar. At the worst, there's all sorts of labels that get applied to it, lazy, indecisive, confused. Not very esteemable, doesn't seem worthy of being valued, because we can't measure it.
We can't look at pausing a reflection in the moment and prove the value of it. Even if we know that reflection is a good thing, that pausing when there's really nothing obvious to do right now, is ultimately a good thing. There's no way in the moment we can prove it, and because we can't prove it, that's a perfect opportunity for fear to come in. That's a perfect opportunity for our insecurities and doubt to become weaponized against us. To start to build a narrative that something has gone wrong. And we can use our discomfort in these situations, that's created by these feelings that cause us to react, that cause us to jump back in and get back to more doing. More doing just for the sake of doing.
I would assert that a life well lived, isn't entirely measurable through achievement. It's really more of a qualitative assessment, it's really being able to look at our own lives and know whether or not things were good for us. Know whether or not the person we're being, and have been, is really us. Know whether or not the things we're striving after we actually want, are actually good.
Opportunities for reflection are opportunities for awareness. Opportunities for not only awareness of our world and our place in it, but also opportunities for self-awareness. To really know ourselves, on a deep level. Not only know what we want, but to know why.
And by going into these times of reflection, with a sense of allowing, with a sense of ease, with a sense of appreciation, it can allow us to not only move through these times, but also really experience something valuable. That no matter what is happening, it's always useful. There's always value in there somewhere. And that definitely goes for times of pause, for times of reflection.
One of the things we can also gain by building our awareness through these reflection times, is we can become far more comfortable with reflection itself. It's like anything, as soon as something has shown real value to us, we're not only more likely to do that again, we're more likely to trust it more.
But that's the thing about life, it's a sense of balance that we're really looking for. That, yes, we want to do things, we want to achieve things, we want to live, but we want to do these things in as high a quality way as we possibly can. We want to actually get what we want to get. We want to actually do what we want to do. And oftentimes the only way to know is to reflect.
Then when these times come up, that feel stagnant, that feel like we're just kind of stuck in between two worlds, getting frustrated is really understandable. They can really feel like something has gone wrong, something is in our way , there's some kind of obstacle here that needs to be cleared, there's a problem that needs to be solved. And that might absolutely be true, but it's really important to get in touch with what the problem actually is.
That sometimes when we're stuck, sometimes when things just aren't happening, the problem isn't so much in our doing, in our effort, the problem can be what we're doing, what we're pointing all of this effort towards. And how do we know? We pay attention. And we bring awareness in, we reflect.
But again, that can be really hard. It can be really hard to appreciate times of reflection. When we really want to get back to the times of achievement. It can be really hard to appreciate the winter when we desperately just want to get back to the summer.
But everything has value. There's something to be gained from no matter what happens to us. And we can find that value by looking for it, we can find that value by subverting some of our own expectations, some of our own needs, for everything that we want to happen immediately, and just relaxing a bit.
Our lives take place over a really long time, and we can learn to be patient. We can learn to be aware, we can learn to abide. We can learn to put down our white-hot intensity that we point towards getting things done, and to learn a much more calm, more at peace, more abiding way of being.
We can use reflection to be a much more well-rounded person. Because if we're so focused on achievement, and we're so focused on busyness and getting things done, what do we do when there's nothing to do? What do we do on the other side of that equation?
Because life is both. Life is made up of times of doing, and times of not doing. Times of pushing, times of allowing. Times of achievement, times of reflection.
And we get much better at life, we live much better lives, by being able to thrive in all of it. By being able to both do and not do. By being able to bring our intention fully in-line with our full selves, and express it in any given moment.
Because life is made up of both what we do and what we don't do. Both are equally as important, yet it's really easy to only look at one side of that, only look at action and undervalue inaction. Only look at excitement, and undervalue peace. Overvalue striving, and undervalue intention.
We can learn. We can grow. Every moment in life is an opportunity to learn something. Every moment in life is an opportunity to grow. But we need to pay attention. We need to seek out these opportunities. If we've learned unhelpful habits around our doing, well, these habits can be unlearned. These habits can be unlearned by bringing in new information, by trying something different. When we're used to pushing, why don't we try letting go for a minute? When we're used to drive and will and making things happen, maybe we can give surrender a try?
Maybe we can learn some new skills, maybe we can learn some new perspectives. Maybe we can learn that there's not just one way to do things. Maybe we can learn that we can get anywhere from where we are, and they're seemingly infinite ways to accomplish this.
If we have unhelpful or unhealthy beliefs around doing, we can learn to challenge these. We can learn to hold these beliefs up to reality, up to our own experience, by doing something different and seeing what happens.
At the very least, we can just learn to relax a little bit, learn to not take things so seriously. Not treat everything as critical in life and death, not be running at an intensity of 10 all the time. We can save our intensity for when it's warranted, and we can seize and savor the opportunities for peace and awareness when they present themselves.
We don't have to gloss over things we don't currently value because we've decided they're not valuable. We can look for value, we can look for opportunity. We can allow and let every present moment, no matter what's happening, be raw material for where we want to go and the person we are becoming.
We can use reflection as an opportunity to grow. We can use reflection as an opportunity for clarity. We can use reflection as an opportunity for finesse. For getting better at living life, getting better at pursuing the things we're actually pursuing, and getting what we actually want.
That's kind of a funny irony of life when we run into it, that sometimes the path to what we want runs through something we had either ignored or decided was completely not valuable. But the only way we'll discover these things, the only way we will correct these beliefs, is to try. The only way we'll know something different, is to experience something different.
And the only way to experience something different, is to do something different. Make different choices, be more open. Be more open to the idea that maybe we don't know as much as we think we do. Maybe the things we are sure of really aren't that sure. Maybe they are. The only way we'll know is to try. And if we've never tried, then we don't really know.
Times of reflection can be very precious. We can learn to appreciate them. We can learn to help them let us grow. Let us be more, let us do more. Let us find a path through life where we not only get what we want, but we find the shortest possible distance to get there.
We can use reflection as not only a way finding tool, but as an assistive device as well. We can pause, we can reflect, we can learn something new, and then we can continue on with greater awareness. And with greater awareness comes greater opportunity.
Living is a skill. Living is a skill that can be learned, but it can never be perfected. There's always something new to learn. There's always some new growth possible. There's always some enhancement in our ability to live, and live well, that's available.
And so it's up to us to actually look for it. It's up to us to both, be curious, as well as calm. It's up to us to find the value in whatever's happening to us, even if that value isn't immediately available. If things are really overly-charged, if something is a really big deal, then of course we can't really see the full value in it in the moment. There's too much emotion around it. The feelings are too strong, there's too much energy. But we can remain as open to it as we can, knowing that clarity will come in eventually.
And when there's something to be dealt with, there's feelings to be felt, there are new things to know, there are delusions and illusions that need to be cleared up, well reflection is a perfect time to do that.
Reflection is a perfect time to assess and reassess, to evaluate and reevaluate, to expand our consciousness around the intention that we're bringing to life every day.
And when we learn to reflect, when we learn to find value in times of non-doing, non achieving, then we can lead a much more full, much more rich life, because we can actually experience, and appreciate, all of it.