“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle

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Our days are filled with navigating the world around us. As infants and young children, we look outward to our parents and teachers to inform us about our surroundings, society, culture, history, etiquette, and everything else we need to live an informed life. As we mature, we apply this knowledge to our studies, work, and relationships. A lot of importance is placed on our ability to understand, and maneuver around, the forces that affect our outer lives. This is as it should be. However, it is also important for us take time out from the demands of the outside world for self-reflection.

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The Cambridge Dictionary defines self-reflection as “The activity of thinking about your own feelings and behaviour, and the reasons that may lie behind them.” Self-reflection takes discipline and requires that we be honest with ourselves. It can be uplifting, difficult, uncomfortable, or fulfilling. It is always powerful. 

Self-reflection’s power lies in its ability to allow us to investigate our inner motivation for our actions, our true feelings, and our beliefs and to understand and confront them. 

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By understanding and confronting our true motivations and feelings, we can make decisions about them. The decisions we make can cause us to take action and change our behaviors, or not, depending on the outcome. Self-reflection can culminate in our making changes for the better for us and for those around us. It can also confirm that we are on the right path, and no change is required, especially if we are being pressured by someone else to change. 

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By understanding and confronting our true motivations and feelings, we can also better understand ourselves. Self-reflection gives us the power to recognise what makes us happy or unhappy, to comprehend why we make the choices we make, and to gain insight into who we really are.This knowledge helps us set priorities that are true to us and make decisions we can be confident about. 

By understanding and confronting our true motivations and feelings, we can also acquire a fresh perspective on our lives. By removing emotion from the equation and facing a problem honestly, we can reevaluate it and find a clear solution to it.

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Because, as human beings, we have been given the gift of self-reflection, it is up to us to use it wisely. As self-reflection is, indeed, a gift,  we must think of it as something to be used often. We can do this by regularly taking time out of our busy lives to be alone and examine our thoughts, choices, and relationships. By doing so, we can make the right decisions that will enable us to live the life we want to live. Now that’s power!