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The Importance of Self-Reflection: How Looking Inward Can Improve Your Mental Health

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

Sunwoo Jung / Getty Images

Why Is Self-Reflection So Important?

When self-reflection becomes unhealthy, how to practice self-reflection, what to do if self-reflection makes you uncomfortable, incorporating self-reflection into your routine.

How well do you know yourself? Do you think about why you do the things you do? Self-reflection is a skill that can help you understand yourself better.

Self-reflection involves being present with yourself and intentionally focusing your attention inward to examine your thoughts, feelings, actions, and motivations, says Angeleena Francis , LMHC, executive director for AMFM Healthcare.

Active self-reflection can help grow your understanding of who you are , what values you believe in, and why you think and act the way you do, says Kristin Wilson , MA, LPC, CCTP, RYT, chief experience officer for Newport Healthcare.

This article explores the benefits and importance of self-reflection, as well as some strategies to help you practice it and incorporate it into your daily life. We also discuss when self-reflection can become unhealthy and suggest some coping strategies.

Self-reflection is important because it helps you form a self-concept and contributes toward self-development.

Builds Your Self-Concept

Self-reflection is critical because it contributes to your self-concept, which is an important part of your identity.

Your self-concept includes your thoughts about your traits, abilities, beliefs, values, roles, and relationships. It plays an influential role in your mood, judgment, and behavioral patterns.

Reflecting inward allows you to know yourself and continue to get to know yourself as you change and develop as a person, says Francis. It helps you understand and strengthen your self-concept as you evolve with time.

Enables Self-Development

Self-reflection also plays a key role in self-development. “It is a required skill for personal growth ,” says Wilson.

Being able to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, or what you did right or wrong, can help you identify areas for growth and improvement, so you can work on them.

For instance, say you gave a presentation at school or work that didn’t go well, despite putting in a lot of work on the project. Spending a little time on self-reflection can help you understand that even though you spent a lot of time working on the project and creating the presentation materials, you didn’t practice giving the presentation. Realizing the problem can help you correct it. So, the next time you have to give a presentation, you can practice it on your colleagues or loved ones first.

Or, say you’ve just broken up with your partner. While it’s easy to blame them for everything that went wrong, self-reflection can help you understand what behaviors of yours contributed to the split. Being mindful of these behaviors can be helpful in other relationships.

Without self-reflection, you would continue to do what you’ve always done and as a result, you may continue to face the same problems you’ve always faced.

Benefits of Self-Reflection

These are some of the benefits of self-reflection, according to the experts:

Increased self-awareness: Spending time in self-reflection can help build greater self-awareness , says Wilson. Self-awareness is a key component of emotional intelligence. It helps you recognize and understand your own emotions, as well as the impact of your emotions on your thoughts and behaviors.
Greater sense of control: Self-reflection involves practicing mindfulness and being present with yourself at the moment. This can help you feel more grounded and in control of yourself, says Francis.
Improved communication skills: Self-reflection can help you improve your communication skills, which can benefit your relationships. Understanding what you’re feeling can help you express yourself clearly, honestly, and empathetically.
Deeper alignment with core values: Self-reflection can help you understand what you believe in and why. This can help ensure that your words and actions are more aligned with your core values, Wilson explains. It can also help reduce cognitive dissonance , which is the discomfort you may experience when your behavior doesn’t align with your values, says Francis.
Better decision-making skills: Self-reflection can help you make better decisions for yourself, says Wilson. Understanding yourself better can help you evaluate all your options and how they will impact you with more clarity. This can help you make sound decisions that you’re more comfortable with, says Francis.
Greater accountability: Self-reflection can help you hold yourself accountable to yourself, says Francis. It can help you evaluate your actions and recognize personal responsibility. It can also help you hold yourself accountable for the goals you’re working toward.

Self-reflection is a healthy practice that is important for mental well-being. However, it can become harmful if it turns into rumination, self-criticism, self-judgment, negative self-talk , and comparison to others, says Wilson.

Here’s what that could look like:

Rumination: Experiencing excessive and repetitive stressful or negative thoughts. Rumination is often obsessive and interferes with other types of mental activity.
Self-judgment: Constantly judging yourself and often finding yourself lacking.
Negative self-talk: Allowing the voice inside your head to discourage you from doing things you want to do. Negative self-talk is often self-defeating.
Self-criticism: Constantly criticizing your actions and decisions.
Comparison: Endlessly comparing yourself to others and feeling inferior.

Kristin Wilson, LPC, CCTP

Looking inward may activate your inner critic, but true self-reflection comes from a place of neutrality and non-judgment.

When anxious thoughts and feelings come up in self-reflection, Wilson says it’s important to practice self-compassion and redirect your focus to actionable insights that can propel your life forward. “We all have faults and room for improvement. Reflect on the behaviors or actions you want to change and take steps to do so.”

It can help to think of what you would say to a friend in a similar situation. For instance, if your friend said they were worried about the status of their job after they gave a presentation that didn’t go well, you would probably be kind to them, tell them not to worry, and to focus on improving their presentation skills in the future. Apply the same compassion to yourself and focus on what you can control.

If you are unable to calm your mind of racing or negative thoughts, Francis recommends seeking support from a trusted person in your life or a mental health professional. “Patterns of negative self-talk, self-doubt , or criticism should be addressed through professional support, as negative cognitions of oneself can lead to symptoms of depression if not resolved.”

Wilson suggests some strategies that can help you practice self-reflection:

Ask yourself open-ended questions: Start off by asking yourself open-ended questions that will prompt self-reflection, such as: “Am I doing what makes me happy?” “Are there things I’d like to improve about myself?” or “What could I have done differently today?” “Am I taking anything or anyone for granted?” Notice what thoughts and feelings arise within you for each question and then begin to think about why. Be curious about yourself and be open to whatever comes up.
Keep a journal: Journaling your thoughts and responses to these questions is an excellent vehicle for self-expression. It can be helpful to look back at your responses, read how you handled things in the past, assess the outcome, and look for where you might make changes in the future.
Try meditation: Meditation can also be a powerful tool for self-reflection and personal growth. Even if it’s only for five minutes, practice sitting in silence and paying attention to what comes up for you. Notice which thoughts are fleeting and which come up more often.
Process major events and emotions: When something happens in your life that makes you feel especially good or bad, take the time to reflect on what occurred, how it made you feel, and either how you can get to that feeling again or what you might do differently the next time. Writing down your thoughts in a journal can help.
Make a self-reflection board: Create a self-reflection board of positive attributes that you add to regularly. Celebrate your authentic self and the ways you stay true to who you are. Having a visual representation of self-reflection can be motivating.

You may avoid self-reflection if it brings up difficult emotions and makes you feel uncomfortable, says Francis. She recommends preparing yourself to get comfortable with the uncomfortable before you start.

Think of your time in self-reflection as a safe space within yourself. “Avoid judging yourself while you explore your inner thoughts, feelings, and motives of behavior,” says Francis. Simply notice what comes up and accept it. Instead of focusing on fears, worries, or regrets, try to look for areas of growth and improvement.

“Practice neutrality and self-compassion so that self-reflection is a positive experience that you will want to do regularly,” says Wilson.

Francis suggests some strategies that can help you incorporate self-reflection into your daily routine:

Dedicate time to it: it’s important to dedicate time to self-reflection and build it into your routine. Find a slot that works for your schedule—it could be five minutes each morning while drinking coffee or 30 minutes sitting outside in nature once per week.
Pick a quiet spot: It can be hard to focus inward if your environment is busy or chaotic. Choose a calm and quiet space that is free of distractions so you can hear your own thoughts.
Pay attention to your senses: Pay attention to your senses. Sensory input is an important component of self-awareness.

Nowak A, Vallacher RR, Bartkowski W, Olson L. Integration and expression: The complementary functions of self-reflection . J Pers . 2022;10.1111/jopy.12730. doi:10.1111/jopy.12730

American Psychological Association. Self-concept .

Dishon N, Oldmeadow JA, Critchley C, Kaufman J. The effect of trait self-awareness, self-reflection, and perceptions of choice meaningfulness on indicators of social identity within a decision-making context . Front Psychol . 2017;8:2034. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02034

Drigas AS, Papoutsi C. A new layered model on emotional intelligence . Behav Sci (Basel) . 2018;8(5):45. doi:10.3390/bs8050045

American Psychological Association. Rumination .

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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Self-reflection following a presentation

by Maria Pantalone | Speaking | 0 comments

Similarly, looking at our own presentations from differing perspectives can assist each of us to become better speakers.

The importance of self-reflection following a presentation

After delivering a presentation it is easy to forget about it and move on to the next task. However to grow as a speaker it is important to reflect on what went well and what could be improved upon. This is an important practice whether you are presenting to a few people or a few hundred people.

The review process

When reviewing your presentation, ask yourself these three questions:

What did you do well?
What could you improve upon?
What would you do differently next time?

When giving a presentation each speaker gives part of themselves and so there is often an emotional response to the presentation. For some, this can be an intense response; for others it can be a mild one.

This emotional response will have an impact on your perception of the success of the presentation. So it is important as part of the review process to be aware of the emotions that you may be feeling about the presentation.

If your experience was a good one then the euphoria (or relief) from the presentation will allow you to see it with a positive perspective. If your experience was less than desirable or even disastrous then it is easy to fall into negative self-talk mode diminishing your confidence for future presentations.

Give yourself time to review all aspects of your presentation free from any emotional connection to the presentation. We are often our own worst critics so if you are not able to recognise anything positive about your presentation allow the emotional connection to pass before you begin the self-review.

An additional question to consider

As part of the review process, also consider this additional question:

If you were sitting in the audience, what impression would you have had of the presentation?

By placing yourself in the audience you are able to see your presentation from a different perspective.

Once you have completed your self-reflection it is important to then note your findings and use them when preparing your next presentation.

Self-reflection is one method that you can use to evaluate your presentation. It is an essential component of the evaluation process enabling you to work on specific areas that you would like to improve and to also build upon your current strengths as a speaker.

Do you undertake a self-reflection process following a presentation?

Maria Pantalone

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Self-reflection: What it is + 8 ways to do it properly

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face of woman reflected in water illustrating the concept of self-reflection

Self-reflection is the gateway to freedom. – Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

You probably look in a mirror most days and are as familiar with your appearance as almost any other sight.

But how often do you look inward to become more familiar with your inner self?

That is the crux of self-reflection: to know your inner workings as well as you know your outer form.

Self-reflection is a process by which you grow your understanding of who you are, what your values are, and why you think and act the way you do.

It is a form of personal analysis that allows you to bring your life into alignment with what you wish it to be.

Let’s explore this important tool further, starting with why you should do it.

The Importance Of Self-Reflection

The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination. Until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life. – Iyanla Vanzant

Self-reflection – also called introspection – is a means to observe and analyze oneself in order to grow as a person.

That growth is the reason why it is so important to spend time in personal reflection.

By understanding who you are now and who you’d like to become, you help identify the steps you need to take on that journey.

Reflecting upon how you behave and what thoughts enter your mind in response to events in the world around you allows you to see what you need to work on.

Perhaps you were a little short and irritable with a work colleague.

By looking back on that, you might realize that this is not how you would wish to be treated and, thus, not how you wish to treat others.

You can then seek to address that behavior in future and perhaps apologize to your colleague if you were particularly rude or unkind.

This might lead to an improved working relationship with this person and a more enjoyable work day overall.

To highlight the importance or self-reflection, you only need to consider the alternative.

If you can’t identify where you might have acted in a regrettable manner, you will most likely act that way again.

In our example, this only prolongs the ill-feeling you might experience as a result of workplace tensions and the potential negative ramifications of that in the long run.

Time spent in personal reflection is also an opportunity to measure your progress in a positive way.

You can identify moments where you have responded to a situation with healthier thoughts and behaviors.

It can provide you with a sense of achievement and keep you motivated in your quest to better yourself – however that looks to you.

Essentially, then, self-reflection is a way to make lots of small course corrections away from less desirable thoughts and behaviors toward those that promote greater well-being.

The Benefits Of Self-Reflection

Now that we’ve seen why it is so important to reflect upon your thoughts and actions, what are the potential practical benefits of doing so?

Improved Relationships

As in our workplace example above, by reflecting on how you treat others and the thoughts you may have about them, you can make changes that lead to more harmonious relationships.

If there are difficulties in a relationship – be that romantic or platonic – you can assess the situation, ask what role you are playing in those difficulties, and find ways to overcome them.

Self-reflection gives you the chance to see how you truly feel about the other person and consider the value that the relationship brings.

This can make you more appreciative of that person which then influences how you interact with them.

Greater Clarity Of Thought

Introspection provides an opportunity to think about something in isolation from the thing itself.

Instead of your mind being clouded by the emotions you experience when interacting with the thing in question, you can view it in a more rational sense.

You can see it with more clarity and think about it from a rounded perspective with pros, cons, and other important details that help you make a reasoned conclusion about how you wish to change with regards to it (or if you actually don’t want to change at all).

Perhaps, for example, that thing is a choice such as the job you take. If you dislike the long commute in your current position, you might not be able to see the benefits it brings during the commute itself.

But by stepping back and thinking about it on a day off, you might realize that despite not being all that enjoyable, the pros of a job you are passionate about or the wages you receive from it make the commute worthwhile on balance.

It may even change how you feel about your commute or how you choose to spend that time.

Knowing Your True Values

You will find it hard to really know yourself until you have spent time thinking about what really matters to you.

When you reflect upon yourself, you might see things that you do or think that go against who you really wish to be.

You can consider the important issues that we face in life and form a solid position on them.

Sometimes, until you really sit and think about something, you cannot decide where you stand on it.

This can cover all sorts of moral issues such as the right to end one’s own life or the protection of the environment.

Or it can simply help you figure out the guiding principles that you would ideally like to live by.

Self-reflection is the means by which your moral compass can be formed and refined so that you are able to act true to it in all that you do.

It can help you feel less lost in life and more empowered to create a future that reflects your core beliefs

Improved Decision-Making

We make hundreds of choices every day, but most are insignificant and can be left to our unconscious mind .

But when it comes to the more important decisions in life, a little personal reflection is invaluable.

It comes back to having clarity of thought and awareness of your true values.

With these two things, you can make decisions that put you on the most optimal path to greater well-being.

This means fewer regrets or missed opportunities and more peace of mind knowing that you have made the right choice.

Better Sleep

When you spend a little time each day looking back upon events and how you responded to them, it can bring closure to any unresolved feelings.

This can help you to not only fall asleep quicker, but have a more restful nights’ sleep in general.

The only caveat to this is that you have to avoid allowing reflection to turn into rumination.

Think about your day, but then turn the page and allow your mind to start afresh the next day. Don’t get stuck on a thought for too long.

You may also like (article continues below):

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Who Am I? The Profound Buddhist Answer To This Most Personal Of Questions
The Ultimate List Of 30 Questions To Ask Yourself About Life
What Is Self-Concept And How Does It Influence Your Life?
What Is The Purpose And Point Of Life? (It’s Not What You Think)
“Why Don’t People Like Me?” – 9 Reasons People Don’t Want To Be Your Friend

Less Stress And Anxiety

One of the key outcomes of self-reflection and knowing yourself more intimately is that you become more confident in yourself and your actions.

You find more certainty in this uncertain world because you are grounded in your sense of self.

With greater certainty comes less stress and anxiety.

You worry less about the ‘what ifs’ and focus more on the things you can do to best align your actions with those guiding principles we spoke of above.

And you worry less about what other people might think about you and your choices because you know that you are doing what’s right for you.

8 Ways To Practice Self-Reflection

Now that you know why it’s important to practice self-reflection and what benefits it might bring, let’s explore how you can actually go about it.

1. Find Quiet Solitude

To be able to think clearly, you should preferably be in a quiet and peaceful environment.

This means solitude, though not necessarily being totally alone in a physical sense, but rather a place where you won’t be disturbed by the people and things around you.

A comfortable place in the house such as a snug, a warm bath, or just lying on your bed is ideal, but you might also wish to sit in the garden or in a park if this helps inspire your thoughts.

2. Ask ‘Why?’

‘Why’ is the first thing to think about.

Why do you act the way you act?

Why do you think the way you think?

This could be in relation to a specific event that day, or it could be a more general search for the reasons behind certain thoughts or behaviors that you have spotted as being a common occurrence.

Some ‘whys’ are easy to answer. You may have shouted at your child because you and your partner had argued shortly before.

Some ‘whys’ are harder to answer. Pinpointing the reasons why you feel so strongly for or against more stringent gun laws is not always straightforward.

3. Ask ‘What?’ ‘Where?’ And ‘Who?’

The next questions you will want to ask and answer after your initial ‘why’ are those that inform you of the way you would like to think or act going forward.

They revolve around these 3 core questions:

What would I have done differently?

Where do I want to get to?

Who do I want to be?

These are the foundation of the wider, more precise questions you will want to ask depending on what aspect of yourself you are reflecting upon.

Here are some examples:

– What should I have done when my boss criticized me in front of my peers?

– Where do I want to be in terms of my relationship in the next few years?

– Who do I look up to?

– What should my response be to a person who is treating me poorly because of my race?

– How many hours do I want to work? (this is a ‘where’ question even though it begins with ‘how.’)

– Does my current diet reflect my views on animal cruelty? (this is a ‘who’ question)

4. Ask ‘How?’

Once you have identified something that you’d like to change, you’ve thought about why you currently do it, and you’ve considered an ideal end point, you have to ask how you’re going to get there.

What things do you either need to start doing or stop doing to reach the stage where your thoughts or behavior have changed in the way you would like?

In other words, what is the roadmap to get you from A (where you are now) to B (where you’d like to be)?

5. Give Yourself Time, But Know When To Stop

As mentioned above, the process of self-reflection can risk the less than healthy state of rumination or overthinking.

When we allow a thought to cycle through our minds again and again with no apparent way to resolve it, we lose all the benefits of inward reflection and can end up harming our mental well-being.

So it is key to set a limit on how long you sit in quiet contemplation.

You may wish to make this a particular amount of time, or you may simply say that it is time to stop when you get stuck on a train of thought.

And when the time has come to stop, the best thing to do is move somewhere else entirely.

That’s why it is not typically a good idea to self-reflect in bed before sleep.

By all means lie on a bed, but do it well before the end of your day or at any other time where sleep is not on the horizon.

To break away from inward reflection, try to immerse yourself and your focus on something other than the things you were reflecting on.

Anything that can distract your mind away from what you were thinking about.

6. Consider Writing Your Thoughts Down

Some people might find it useful to make notes of their thoughts as they are reflecting on themselves.

Writing in a journal is a popular way to do this as it keeps everything in one place and allows you to look back on what you’ve thought previously to keep you on the right path.

This can also be helpful if you find it difficult to get off a particular thought. Once it is written down and safely stored, you might find that the mind can let go of it more easily without the threat of forgetting it.

7. Speak To A Therapist

Whilst most people probably don’t need to take this step, others might find that talking things out with a therapist is the most effective means of organizing their thoughts and feelings.

As a qualified professional, a therapist can help guide your thought process toward the most important elements of your life and the issues you may be facing.

They can also help you to think about the steps you might need to take to make the positive changes you wish to make.

You may find that talking to somebody else rather than going it alone takes a weight off your mind and helps you to be consistent in your self-reflection efforts.

8. What If I Don’t Enjoy It?

A healthy level of self-reflection typically empowers and energizes an individual as they see ways to improve upon themselves.

But this won’t be the case for everyone.

If you are really struggling to get to grips with the process or find that it is raising some difficult issues from the past, your best bet is probably to speak to a therapist.

You have not failed if you have to ask for help . You have succeeded in realizing that you needed to.

A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, “Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?” If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one’s time – the stuff of life. – Carl Sandburg

About The Author

Steve Phillips-Waller is the founder and editor of A Conscious Rethink. He has written extensively on the topics of life, relationships, and mental health for more than 8 years.

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Self-Reflection: 3 Strategies That Actually Work

January 9, 2024 by Mick

Do you often find yourself getting caught up in life, feeling directionless, and questioning your decisions?

Self-reflection is a strategic tool for actionable change.

While the self-reflection process might seem abstract or time-consuming, it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right techniques, it won’t take a lot of time and it also offers powerful real-world benefits.

In this article, I’ll provide 3 helpful frameworks for self-reflection. And we’ll also cover the 11 common self-reflection practices for growth and self-awareness .

They’ll offer a practical, structured, and time-efficient way to experience greater personal and professional development.

Let’s dive in!

What is self-reflection?

Why is self-reflection important.

Benefits of the self-reflection process

Personal self-reflection example

3 actionable self-reflection strategies, 11 ways to practice self-reflection.

Self-reflection is an intensely personal process of understanding your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It involves time to examine your internal experiences, motivations, emotions, and values.

Reflecting on yourself offers new perspectives, deepens self-understanding, and helps you recognize your strengths and areas for personal growth.

It’s a practice that changed my life.

For years, I was focused on material success, chasing external validation , and constantly comparing myself to others .

I never felt happy or good enough as a result.

Self-reflection changed my worldview, attitude, and focus. Reflecting helped me to better understand the past and present. And it also helped me to look into the future and set more meaningful goals .

Self-reflection is important because it serves as a strategic tool to really understand yourself, your core values , and your true aspirations.

Too many of us chase other people’s definition of success .

And in our ever-faster-paced world, it’s more important than ever to question who you are and what you want out of life .

What’s authentic to you?

Personal reflection offers a structured approach to pause, think, and realign with your values and goals.

Doing so reduces your chance of feeling lost and overwhelmed in our complex society . In addition, it enhances self-awareness and emotional intelligence , improving the relationship with yourself and others.

Let’s uncover all the personal benefits of self-reflection.

12 Benefits of the self-reflection process

Self-reflection is your pathway to growth and personal well-being. The key advantages of self-reflection include:

Boosts self-awareness : You can better understand and navigate your emotions, thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and motivations.
Fosters self-discovery : It reveals who you are at your core, allowing you to live a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Improves mental health: Reflecting on your experiences and emotions can help you process them, reducing stress and anxiety.
Better decision-making skills: Learning from the past and learning about yourself leads to better and more authentic decisions.
Improves relationships: Self-reflection leads to more emotional intelligence, improving your communication skills and empathy.
Fosters a fulfilling life : Reflecting on what brings joy can guide you toward a life that aligns with your true passions and desires.
Improves confidence : Recognizing your strengths and accomplishments boosts your self-esteem and self-assurance.
Continuous self-improvement : Regular self-reflection is a helpful tool to foster growth in your personal and professional life.
More goal success : Not only will self-reflection enable meaningful goal-setting, but it also helps you to stay focused on achieving them.
Enhances problem-solving: Reflecting empowers creative thinking and brainstorming solutions from various perspectives.
Improves conflict resolution: A better understanding of your role and behavior in conflicts helps you to find empathetic resolutions.
Better critical thinking: Rather than accepting your initial thoughts, reflection helps you to tap into the power of questions and challenge your assumptions and beliefs.

In summary, self-reflection is essential for better relationships and leading a more authentic life and personal fulfillment.

I used to pursue material success, always chasing the next big opportunity that promised financial freedom. I learned about day trading, dropshipping, MLMs, and even real estate.

Ultimately, it was the game of poker that would be my ticket to freedom.

While the dopamine hits kept me chasing my dream of winning a tournament and earning the big bucks, I never earned enough to make it a career. In fact, my hourly rate over the years was less than a dollar…

But here is what’s more important:

Playing poker left me feeling empty and unfulfilled, even when I won small tournaments or had winning days.

Upon personal reflection, I noticed something that’s now so obvious to me: I was more fixated on the results than pursuing mastery of the game.

You see, poker felt meaningless to me.

I wanted to get good for the money, not for the joy of the game. It was more like an addiction than a real attempt to create a fulfilling career and life.

I was pursuing hope, not skills.

Upon this realization, I quit the game. Instead of chasing money, I changed my approach and pursued meaning, growth, and fulfillment.

That’s why I started this blog.

While it didn’t lead to instant gratification, it did lead to an internship that taught me a high-income skill . And that’s why I now experience the freedom I always desired as a freelance SEO specialist.

The best part?

I now do something I enjoy most of the time.

There’s no grand score to achieve. Instead, it’s a slow and long grind. But this time, it’s a process that I enjoy. I now pursue mastery, not just results.

That’s the power of chasing the right things in life…

…and self-reflection uncovers it.

Self-reflection can either be a time-consuming practice without any tangible benefits or your greatest catalyst for success and happiness.

Achieving the latter requires a structured approach.

By implementing the following three strategies, you’ll gain the tools for clarity, focus, and frequent personal breakthroughs.

Here’s the first one:

Strategy 1: Create triggers for immediate reflection

Most people think of self-reflection as a tedious activity that just won’t fit into their already overly-packed agenda.

But that’s not true.

You can self-reflect for just one minute right now.

In fact, there’s a huge benefit to anchoring self-reflection rituals to everyday experiences. Not only is this approach practical, but it also becomes an automatic and habitual practice .

Here are some ideas:

Drinking morning coffee also offers an opportunity to reflect on something you learned, your daily goals, or to express gratitude.
Walking out of the meeting room is an opportunity to think about one thing that went well and one thing to improve.
Leaving a virtual meeting could become your cue to grab a (digital) self-help journal to reflect on your emotions.
Use heated situations as a trigger to take a breath, tune into your emotions, and think before you respond.
Set alarms, use sticky notes, and agenda reminders during the day to prompt various self-reflection questions.
Before going to sleep, fill out self-reflection journaling prompts. The Five Minute Journal is a beginner-friendly favorite of mine.

Just like building any good habit , it takes some initial effort. And you might forget to self-reflect, even though your sticky note reminder is right in front of you.

It will happen and that’s okay.

Just keep getting back to this practice.

Once you build this self-reflection habit, you’ll turn many daily moments into automatic feedback that’ll accelerate your personal growth.

Strategy 2: Build a daily or weekly reflection practice

When most people think about self-reflection, they think about a daily or weekly practice. A daily practice usually takes 5-15 minutes, whereas a weekly practice can take up to an hour.

While it’s true that this practice requires dedicated time in your already busy schedule, doing it the right way will unlock tremendous personal growth and fulfillment.

The best way I’ve found is by developing a structured routine, focusing on positive aspects.

For example, you can reflect on:

Your goal progress;
What you’ve learned;
Things that went well;
Things you’re grateful for;
Areas you would like to improve;
What emotions and feelings you have experienced;
And any other thought or behavioral patterns you noticed.

Use this habitual practice to review your progress and realign your actions with your values and goals. It works perfectly in combination with goal-setting, helping you stay consistent and on track .

Strategy 3: Schedule time for the QPR

In the business world, there’s something called the Quarterly Business Review (QBR). The primary purpose is to review the performance and plan for the upcoming quarter.

Although I consider most business reviews and meetings as mundane and unnecessary, I always looked forward to QBRs.

They gave insights into what we achieved.

And they provided clarity on the team’s direction and strategy.

But a QBR is extremely valuable in your personal life too. It’s especially helpful if you want to maximize your success and fulfillment.

Let’s call it the Quarterly Personal Review or QPR.

Once a quarter, spend a large chunk of your time to:

Reflect on past mistakes and lessons learned;
Reflect on your challenges and achievements;
Evaluate the progress you made toward your goals;
Reassess your priorities, aspirations, and desires;
Strategize your future plans, goals, and direction.

I love this strategic session and usually spend an entire afternoon on my personal QBR.

While most people use annual reviews, I prefer QPRs for this reason: a year is simply too long to effectively conceptualize for the brain.

And a personal QBR is the perfect antidote.

The same is true for goal-setting. And while I do set some yearly targets, I do most project-based goal-setting in quarterly increments, not yearly.

Pro tip: Get out in nature or getaway for the weekend for your QPR. Changing your environment can make a more fun and special moment, benefiting your thinking and creative process.

Now that you’ve learned about the strategies to self-reflect, let’s discuss the self-reflection exercises and practices you can use.

We’ll cover not only the common introspection methods, focusing mostly on developing internal self-awareness . And we’ll explore unique methods to gain self-insights.

Here’s the first one:

#1: Thinking about thinking

Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

There are a gazillion self-reflection questions, journaling prompts, and techniques. And all of them are just as effective as they’re ineffective.

That’s why you must first clarify your needs and goals.

Do you want to…

discover yourself to live a more authentic life ?
make more thoughtful, well-informed decisions?
enhance your ability to be present in the moment?
better understand your own thoughts and emotions ?
evaluate and optimize how you use your time and energy?
develop your ability to cope with stress, adversity, and change?
understand your role in relationships better and improve how you interact with others?

It’s beneficial to frequently reflect on your priorities and reassess your self-reflection goals. Your QPR is a good time to do this.

Understanding which outcomes you desire from your practice helps you to pick the right self-reflection exercises and enables you to…

#2: Ask the RIGHT open-ended questions

While there’s a place for binary, yes/no-type of questions, open-ended questions are more powerful to deepen self-reflection.

However, avoid WHY questions when reflecting on the past.

In this guide on self-awareness , we uncovered that WHY questions that focus on past events prompt wrong and often disempowering answers.

Instead, use WHAT and HOW questions.

Here’s an example:

Why did this project fail?
What specific challenges did we encounter in this project?
How can these challenges be addressed in future projects?

That said, WHY questions can be helpful in a future-oriented context, such as “Why is becoming a millionaire important to me?”

Using WHY questions in this context helped me uncover that I wanted to do meaningful work, have time flexibility, and have location independence.

All of which could be achieved without becoming a millionaire.

In a future-oriented context, asking WHY questions several times can help you uncover your true motivations.

Here’s a quick summary:

Use open-ended self-reflection questions;
Avoid WHY-based questions when reflecting on the past;
Ask yourself at least 5 times WHY if you want to discover your motivations and unlock your true desires.

#3: Use questions to jumpstart self-reflection

Don’t know where to start with self-reflection?

Then kickstart your self-reflection journey with predefined questions.

While the best questions relate to your goals and needs, here are a few questions to inspire you:

Past: What achievements are you proud of?
Present: What’s something you would like to change?
Future: Who do you want to be in 5 years from now?
Success: What does a life well-lived mean to you?
Self-discovery: What are your top 5 strengths?

Did you answer them?

If not, give it a try!

In addition, here’s an extensive list of self-reflection questions across various topics, including daily, weekly, and quarterly ones.

Pick and customize them to suit your needs.

#4: Use reflective journaling prompts

Do you prefer to journal for introspection?

Then use the self-reflection questions as daily journaling prompts .

For example, write down your answers to the following prompts:

What moment made me feel most fulfilled this week?
How have I grown from my recent challenges?
What are 3 things I feel grateful for this week?

Besides looking through lists of self-reflection journaling prompts, you can also opt for scientific-based journals. Check out this list of the best guided journals . There are many great options such as The Five Minute Journal and the Clever Fox Self-Care Journal .

And when you journal…

#5: Incorporate an element of gratitude

Gratitude can transform your perspective and turn everyday moments into appreciation. It also fosters a more positive connection with yourself and the world around you.

You can either anchor gratitude to daily moments or incorporate it into a habitual practice. For example:

Make gratitude a part of your morning routine and hang sticky notes on the bathroom mirror to remind yourself.
Add gratitude prompts to your journaling routine.
Set alarms on your phone or laptop to take brief moments during your day to express gratitude within yourself.
Use the end of meetings at work to recognize and appreciate one good thing about the meeting or someone who participated.

Use obvious anchors that make your practice easy to remember. For example, use (silent) alarms on your phone or on your working device to prompt the gratitude habit. Can’t miss those.

#6: Meditate for self-awareness

Meditation is a powerful tool for self-reflection, offering a quiet space to explore your inner world.

Through meditation, you become self-aware of your automatic thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and recurring patterns. And with practice, it’ll calm your mind, allowing deeper insights to surface.

Initially, it’ll be challenging to focus on the present.

Your focus will fade.

Positive and negative thoughts will arise and take you on a wild ride.

It’s all part of the process.

Instead of getting frustrated or angry, observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment. Then, bring your focus back to the present moment.

Frequent meditation will make you the master of this process.

You’ll also notice that certain thoughts will resurface.

Explore them if you want.

Enjoy being the observer of your mind and using this tool for growth , rather than being the prisoner of your automatic thoughts.

When you stop identifying with your thoughts but see them as passing clouds, you’ll feel more relaxed and self-centered.

#7: Review and set goals

Regularly reviewing and setting goals is a crucial aspect of living a meaningful and fulfilling life.

This process involves thinking about your challenges, lessons, and achievements. It also involves identifying new, meaningful objectives.

You can incorporate goal-setting as part of your daily, weekly, and quarterly self-reflection practices. In fact, I encourage you to do each of those.

#8: Talk to yourself

Is it weird to talk to yourself?

I love talking to myself, especially when I’m walking around outside. It somehow helps me internalize and understand my thoughts better.

I mean, who cares?

Besides, why not have a passionate conversation with yourself?

You can ponder positive and negative feelings, thoughts, and experiences. And you can think about any decisions you face or aspirations you’ve got.

Self-talk can be a valuable tool to practice self-reflection.

After all, you’re not a stranger to yourself.

Of course, you can also speak silently within yourself. But there’s nothing wrong with talking to yourself out loud, as long as you’re respectful of the environment that you’re in.

I usually do it when I’m home alone or when I…

#9: Get out into nature

Immersing yourself in nature offers powerful benefits for self-reflection.

At least, it does for me.

Once a quarter, I like to go for a long walk through nature by myself, pondering my thoughts, experiences, and direction for my life.

Magic happens when I do.

There’s something about moving your body through the beauty of nature that inspires a different kind of introspection.

What if you can’t think of anything to think about?

Just walk and enjoy nature.

Sooner or later, new ideas, thoughts, and often deeper insights will appear. So give nature a try and immerse yourself in the experience for an entire day.

Perfect for one of your QPRs.

At least, it’s worth a shot.

#10: Ask for feedback

Getting feedback from others can also be a valuable part of self-reflection. It can provide insights you would never consider, broaden perspective, and increase your external self-awareness.

There are several ways to collect feedback:

Periodic feedback: Ask your colleagues, friends, or family for feedback. You can do this through a structured questionnaire.
Immediate feedback: Ask for specific feedback immediately after an event. For example, ask someone what you did well and what you can improve after you presented something.
Automatic feedback: Develop automatic systems to gather feedback. For example, send feedback requests after your fifth consultation call with a client. In your personal life, you can use feedback apps, invest in a coach, or find an accountability buddy to engage in a weekly moment for feedback.

Use anonymous submissions to get honest feedback, especially if you’re requesting feedback from people who are close to you. Google Forms and most dedicated feedback apps offer this option.

External insights can highlight areas for personal improvement that you might not easily recognize yourself.

#11: Connect with others

While you may think of self-reflection as a solo practice, you can also incorporate social elements into the mix.

After all, you’ve probably experienced “aha” moments when you were talking with your partner, friends, family members, or even strangers.

Give the following ideas a try with your partner, a close friend, or your accountability buddy:

Shared daily or weekly self-reflection: Discuss what went well, what you learned, and what you would like to improve upon.
Shared self-reflection practice: Set a time during which you talk about your experiences while the other person listens. If there’s a long silence, they’re allowed to ask follow-up questions. But they’re only allowed to provide advice or feedback when your time’s up. Then, of course, switch roles. Also, feel free to adjust these rules to your liking.

While you can do this with someone you know, it might work even better with a stranger. Since they’ve no emotional connection to you, they’re less likely to provide answers to please you, invoking more honest opinions.

Besides, finding strangers for this activity might be easier than you think.

By engaging in personal development events or online communities, I’m sure you can find someone who would like to engage in this practice with you.

Alternatively, you can find professional support.

Personal development coaches can guide the self-reflection process and help you navigate complex topics. And they often offer structured techniques and unbiased perspectives.

Although not necessary, a social aspect can be a valuable addition to your self-reflection arsenal.

Pro tip: Make notes in a self-reflection journal

No matter what practice you choose, maintaining a self-reflection journal or some form of writing and note-taking is extremely valuable.

Here’s why:

Enhances self-awareness: Writing encourages you to pause and reflect on your thoughts, experiences, and ideas.
Improves self-understanding: Writing offers a different way to process information, revealing unique insights.
Serves as a second mind: By creating a record of your insights, you can more reflect on previous thoughts and ideas.

Recording your insights and ideas keeps your mind free for creative thinking, rather than memorization.

Here are the top 3 self-reflection journals:

The Five Minute Journal : Perfect for those who are new to journaling or have limited time. It offers quick daily prompts for gratitude, goals, and self-reflection.
Clever Fox Self-Care Journal : This journal is specifically crafted to enhance your well-being and mental health. It focuses on encouraging practices that nourish self-care.
3x Happier Journal : This self-reflection journal is centered around the concept of positive psychology and aims to boost your happiness. It employs scientifically-backed methods and exercises to cultivate positivity, gratitude, and joy.

Get one today and tap into the benefits of journaling for mental health and introspection .

What’s next?

We explored the transformative power of practicing self-reflection for clarity, mental health, and personal growth.

Rather than seeing self-reflection as an intangible and time-consuming process, we covered strategies to make it a structured, actionable, and efficient tool to empower you to create a life you love.

Key takeaways:

Self-reflection improves your self-understanding, relationships, and mental well-being, empowering a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Combine the 3 reflective strategies to maximize its impact, consisting of momentary rituals, a daily or weekly practice, and a QPR.
It’s highly recommended to use a self-reflection journal or note-taking app to keep track of your thoughts, ideas, and insights.

Further resources:

Best guided journal for beginners
Best free personality test for introspection
Best books to improve self-awareness

Challenge: For the next week, spend 5 minutes per day to reflect on your experiences, emotions, and learnings.

Do you want to create a life you love? Sign up to receive more insights and strategies for living an authentic and fulfilling life.

Mick is a personal growth enthusiast and was able to use it to transform his life. He now helps others pursue their dreams, create positive change, and build better lives through self-improvement.

13 Self Reflection Worksheets & Templates to Use in Therapy

While valuable for clients and students, it is equally vital for therapists, coaches, and mental health professionals.

Literature across multiple disciplines confirms that reflection serves therapists by improving “learning and performance in essential competencies” (Aronson, 2011, p. 200). In therapy, it helps the client “manage personal feelings, such as anxiety and inadequacy, and their impact on others” (Fisher, Chew, & Leow, 2015, p. 736).

This article introduces the basics behind reflection along with questions and worksheets that encourage and support the reflective process and maximize the benefits for therapists, clients, and students.

Before you continue, you might like to download our three Meaning and Valued Living Exercises for free . These creative, science-based exercises will help you learn more about your values, motivations, and goals and will give you the tools to inspire a sense of meaning in the lives of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

Fostering reflection skills: the basics, 50+ questions to ask your clients or students, 5 helpful reflection worksheets & tools, journaling & diaries: 2 useful templates, top 3 activities for practicing reflection, 3 fun games to inspire clients, positivepsychology.com’s reflection resources, a take-home message.

While reflection has no single, universal definition, Aronson (2011, p. 200) frames it as the “process of analyzing, questioning, and reframing an experience in order to make an assessment of it for the purposes of learning (reflective learning) and/or improve practice (reflective practice).” It has multiple uses in various contexts.

Reflection is central to most therapies. Indeed, Socratic questioning (using open yet focused questions) is widely used in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to encourage reflection and unpack deeply held beliefs (Bennett-Levy, Thwaites, Chaddock, & Davis, 2009).

Within therapy , Bennett-Levy et al. (2009) recognized that reflection can be beneficial for both the therapist and the client, and can be considered from several perspectives.

Reflective practices Reflection as part of the clinical experience, using journals, video, and group activities.
Reflective skills The ability to reflect on oneself through therapeutic interaction and self-awareness of feelings and thoughts.
Reflective systems Reflection results from the interaction of several processes, including the individual’s memory, skills, and reflective system.
Reflective processes Reflection involves the ability to observe (possibly via visualization) and then reflect or conceptualize to engage in further processing, including elaboration, problem solving, and self-questioning.

Bennett-Levy et al. (2009, p. 121) offer the following helpful definition of reflection:

“Reflection is the process of intentionally focusing one’s attention on a particular content; observing and clarifying this focus; and using other knowledge and cognitive processes (such as self-questioning, logical analysis and problem-solving) to make meaningful links.”

The benefits of reflection carry across to the learning process found within educational environments. It forms the second of the following four-stage model used by coaches engaging with students to understand the learning process (Adams, 2016):

Attending to and focusing on the relevant features of their experience
Actively reflecting on their experience
Extracting learning from that experience
Planning how to create new ways of behaving in response to the learning

Reflection and learning are also highly applicable outside of school.

While reflection is vital to self-awareness and healing for clients, it is also a powerful and insightful tool for therapists.

Mental health professionals must be self-aware and cognizant of the skills they are using, because “in no other profession does the personality and behavior of the professional make such difference as it does in counseling” (Meier & Davis, 1997).

The following questions can be helpful for new and existing counselors and their clients to increase self-awareness and knowledge of counseling techniques (modified from Bennett-Levy et al., 2009):

Observe the experience (such as the session or intervention). How did I feel? What did I notice?
Clarify the experience. What did I learn? Was it helpful? What did not change?

The following two points are more applicable for therapists:

Implications of the experience for clinical practice What are the implications for and impacts on one-to-one therapy, supervision, consultation, etc.?
Implications of the experience for how I see myself as a therapist What are the implications of this experience for my understanding of cognitive therapy and theory?

Considering each question in turn can provide insights that encourage greater knowledge of the therapeutic process and promote lessons to take forward to future sessions.

Asking appropriate questions is a crucial aspect of reflection and central to deeper, long-lasting learning (Aronson, 2011; Adams, 2016).

Reflection questions for students

The following three sets of questions promote reflection in students by considering academic performance (modified from ones used by the Colorado Department of Education ):

Reflective Questions for personal academic performance

These Reflective Questions prompt the student to think about what they are learning, why they are learning, and how they can improve the overall process.

The student answers the first question regarding what they have been learning and then selects a sample of other questions to prompt reflection.

They then complete the last column with their thoughts for later review by themselves or a therapist, coach, or counselor.

A sample of the questions includes:

What have you been learning about (today, this week, or this semester)? Why do you think these objectives and this subject are important? Did you give your best effort on your most recent assignment?

Reflective Metacognition Questions for students

Reflective Metacognition Questions help students reflect on how and what they think .

The questions are grouped under the following subsections and can be answered individually, in pairs, or as a group exercise, with a summary of the answers placed in the final column.

Reflection and collaboration
Self-reflection

Example questions include:

What are your thoughts about what was said? Are there any other similar answers or alternative answers? Why do you think this answer is true?

Reflection Questions in Therapy

Reflection is an essential part of therapy.

Using the Reflective Questions in Therapy worksheet, the therapist can encourage and facilitate the process of reflection in the client, such as (Bennett-Levy et al., 2009):

What do I wish people better understood about me? What behaviors and beliefs do I want to let go of? Have I been receiving enough support this year?

Download 3 Meaning & Valued Living Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients with tools to find meaning in life help and pursue directions that are in alignment with values.

Download 3 Free Meaning Tools Pack (PDF)

By filling out your name and email address below.

During CBT and other therapies, the client is often given a workbook or journal to capture reflections on the practice or skills they develop as they progress through treatment.

Reflection reinforces learning within the sessions and, more importantly, leads to deeper insights between sessions (Bennett-Levy et al., 2009).

Learning From My Past

The Reflections on Learning From My Past worksheet helps the client capture and reflect on an event from their past and consider how different behavior may have led to an alternate outcome.

The client is asked a series of questions about the incident, such as:

What happened or what was the event? How did it make you feel? How did you handle it?

Self-Reflection Behavior Review

At the end of the year or looking back on the client’s life, it can help to look for patterns in behavior.

The Self-Reflection Behavior Review worksheet is a valuable way to summarize events and see the recurring traps into which the client falls.

The summary provides a valuable talking point during therapy sessions and can be referred to later in order to assess how behavior has changed and improved.

It asks the client to consider:

Do you see a pattern in your behavior? How could you act differently in the future? What situations should you try to avoid?

Who Am I Self-Reflection

In life, we are often so busy with everyday tasks that we forget to take stock of who we are, what we are good at, and what is important to us.

Clients or students can use the Who Am I Self-Reflection worksheet to think about what they are good at, what significant challenges they have been confronted with, and what inspires them.

Some questions to consider include:

Think of something significant that went wrong. What did I learn from it? What am I passionate about? What do I love most about myself?

Student Work Reflection

Students can help their existing and future learning by thinking about how they are approaching their work and using metacognitive skills to drive future improvements (Adams, 2016).

The Student Work Reflection is a set of simple repeating questions to consider how they approach each task in school.

It asks the student to consider:

How could I improve? What am I still working on? What am I most proud of?

Reflection on Group Activities

Reflection is equally important in group tasks as in individual tasks. The Reflection on Group Activities is for an educational or therapy setting to assess the success and learnings from a group activity.

Working individually or in groups, students can answer questions such as:

What went well? What did not go well? What could we try next time?

As an intervention, it is a creative way to engage clients in a therapeutic activity, increasing self-awareness and personal growth.

It can be helpful to capture some of the key events of the day. The act of writing what happened and reviewing it later can be insightful and help you recognize positive and negative patterns in your behavior.

Daily Reflection of Feelings

Use the Daily Reflection of Feelings journal with the client to record how their day went and capture the feelings they experienced.

Questions include:

What was the best part of the day? What would you change about the day if you could? What are you looking forward to tomorrow?

Daily Reflection of Behavior

Clients and therapists can benefit from reviewing significant events that occurred between sessions.

Use the Daily Reflection of Behavior journal with clients to capture daily behaviors that were unexpected or parts of habits that the client wishes to change.

What happened? How did I behave? Why did it happen?

How to start a creative journal – Johanna Clough

Several techniques can encourage the process of reflection in clients and students.

DARN The DARN acronym forms an important aspect of motivational interviewing . With the use of evocative change questions, the client is invited to engage in reflection to consider the change, including:

Desire questions – What I would like, wish, or want to do? Ability questions – Capturing the idea that change is possible. Reasons questions – Recognizing the reasons for change. Need questions – Identifying the urgency of the change.

OARS OARS is another acronym important to the process of motivational interviewing to elicit change talk through the use of the following:

Open questions encourage the client to talk. Affirmations include statements of understanding and offers of support. Reflections capture and rephrase what the client has said Summarizing provides a check-in with the client by summarizing what has been said.

OARS encourages reflection in both the therapist and the client.

Socratic questioning Observing and taking part in Socratic questioning can be a valuable opportunity to learn about the process of encouraging reflection in others and in oneself.

Consider the five questions:

What happened? When did it happen? Where did it happen? Why did it happen? How did it happen?

Try out the following three activities with clients or students.

Your life as a play

You can carry out this reflective exercise in small groups of three or four people.

Ask each person to describe their ideal life in three acts, as though it were a play.

What past dreams were achieved? What is the present (good and bad)? What is your ideal future?

Share with the group, discussing each of the acts, adding humorous insights along the way. End with your positive view of how the future might look.

Shield of honor

This activity is ideal for reflection in multiple small groups.

Ask each group to create a shield out of a large piece of paper.

Divide the paper into four equal rectangles, representing:

Skills and abilities they offer
Skills and abilities they need to improve
Frustrations
What they are proud of

Tell the group they are only allowed to use drawings and pictures – no words.

After 20 minutes, ask each group to share what they have created.

Reflection on communication

Individuals are grouped into pairs and asked to sit back-to-back.

One person is given either a pen and paper or building blocks and asked to create a novel design.

Ask them to describe what it looks like, while the other person attempts to recreate the design on their side.

Once finished, the two can compare what they have created and discuss the communication process.

17 Tools To Encourage Meaningful, Value-Aligned Living

This 17 Meaning & Valued Living Exercises [PDF] pack contains our best exercises for helping others discover their purpose and live more fulfilling, value-aligned lives.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Throughout this post, we’ve discussed the importance of clarifying wants, behavior patterns, and forces of motivation to better understand what brings meaning throughout one’s life. To this end, we invite you to check out our free Meaning & Valued Living Exercises Pack .

This pack features three of our top tools from the Positive Psychology Toolkit©, all of which center on the theme of values-based living:

The Top 5 Values This exercise draws on key principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help clients begin brainstorming their values. Following this, clients will then prioritize these values in a list to identify those most central to who they are.
Self-Eulogy This exercise invites clients to consider how they’d like to be remembered at their funeral as a means to identify and clarify values. Based on this, they can then consider how well they are living in alignment with these values.
The Scoreboard Metaphor This exercise helps clients recognize how to enact their values through goal-setting. In particular, it draws on the metaphor of a basketball game to illustrate how living into one’s values is an ongoing process and that the paths by which we pursue our goals are opportunities to enact our values in daily life.

You can access all three exercises for free by downloading our Meaning & Valued Living Exercises Pack .

Additionally, if you’re looking for further reading on the topic of self-reflection, be sure to check out our blog post featuring ten book recommendations .

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others discover meaning, this collection contains 17 validated meaning tools for practitioners. Use them to help others choose directions for their lives in alignment with what is truly important to them.

Reflection engages clients and students in the process of analyzing, questioning, and reframing an experience. It encourages individuals or groups to learn and improve, and promotes deeper, longer lasting learning (Aronson, 2011).

Within therapy and coaching, reflection can help individuals manage their feelings (such as anxiety or self-doubt) and recognize how their behavior affects others (Fisher et al., 2015).

In an educational setting, research shows that questions and exercises prompt learners to improve core competencies (Aronson, 2011).

In any environment, reflection involves metacognition. Individuals must step outside of their existing cognition to think about their thinking . It is a skill that is best learned through practice.

Therapists, coaches, counselors, and teachers can help by prompting the client or class to consider what they have learned, what has gone well (and hasn’t), and what they could have done differently.

The takeaways from reflection can change a person’s view of what has already happened and influence how they behave in the future.

The exercises and questions within this article will engage others, promoting the reflective process and offering deeper understanding and tools for future learning.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Meaning and Valued Living Exercises for free .

Adams, M. (2016). Coaching psychology in schools: Enhancing performance, development and wellbeing . Routledge.
Aronson, L. (2011). Twelve tips for teaching reflection at all levels of medical education. Medical Teacher , 33 (3), 200–205.
Bennett-Levy, J., Thwaites, R., Chaddock, A., & Davis, M. (2009). Reflective practice in cognitive behavioural therapy: The engine of lifelong learning. In J. Stedmon & R. Dallos (Eds.), Reflective practice in psychotherapy and counselling (pp. 115–35). Open University Press.
Fisher, P., Chew, K., & Leow, Y. J. (2015). Clinical psychologists’ use of reflection and reflective practice within clinical work. Reflective Practice , 16 (6), 731–743.
Hayman, B., Wilkes, L., & Jackson, D. (2012). Journaling: Identification of challenges and reflection on strategies. Nurse Researcher , 19 (3), 27–31.
Meier, S., & Davis, S. (1997). The Elements of Counselling . Brooks/Cole.

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How to Nail the Q&A After Your Presentation

Caroline Webb

You can’t rehearse it, but you can be prepared.

When preparing to give a presentation, most professionals focus their energy on the main portion of their talk — their key messages, slides, and takeaways. And far too few people think through how you’ll answer questions at the end of the presentation can be a big mistake. If you’re worried about how to hand the Q&A, there are several things you can do. Change your mindset. Rather than dreading this part of the talk, develop an appreciation for the conversation. It’s a good thing that people have follow-up questions and want to further engage with your content. Beforehand, think through the types of questions audience members might ask. Put yourself in your shoes and ask yourself what concerns they might have about how your message impacts their job. Then, when you’re asked a question, especially one that might be contentious, start your answer by focusing on where you and the person asking it agree. This makes the person feel seen and connected to you. And if you’re asked a question out of left field, be curious. Ask follow-up questions that help you understand what they’re getting at and where they’re coming from.

If you’re not a huge fan of public speaking , you’re in good company. It’s such a widely shared source of anxiety that when psychologists want to induce unpleasant stress in a person for experimental purposes, they often use a public speaking task called the Trier Social Stress Test . The test requires people to give a talk and do sums in front of a panel of impassive listeners, and it reliably generates stress markers such as a faster heart rate, raised cortisol levels, and “enhanced skin conductance,” which is the polite way of saying sweaty palms.

Caroline Webb is the author of How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life . She is also CEO of coaching firm Sevenshift , and a Senior Adviser to McKinsey & Company. Follow her on Twitter @caroline_webb_ , Facebook , or Google + .

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How to Write a Self Evaluation for a Powerpoint Presentation

PowerPoint presentations offer the dual challenge of first putting together useful, engaging slides, and then presenting the slides in an effective and informative way. Writing a self-evaluation after giving such a presentation will help you pinpoint your strengths and identify the skills you could stand to improve. Whether you are required to write an evaluation for a school assignment, or you just want to get better at PowerPoint presentations for your future career, an evaluation is most effective when you are honest with yourself.

Review the PowerPoint presentation. Ideally, you will have access to a video--or at least audio--recording of yourself giving the presentation. If not, you'll have to consult your memory. Look over the slides themselves, comparing them to the assignment guidelines (if this was a school assignment) and the general rules of good PowerPoint presentations.

Effective PowerPoint slides avoid abbreviations, acronyms and long sentences, according to a George Mason University website, while the graphics complement but do not overwhelm the text.

Make a list of strong and weak points of your presentation. Address the content portion of the presentation (whether it was useful, well researched, cogent and so on), the technical aspect (whether the slides were tidy, easy to read and added information) and the speaking aspect. Speaking while giving a PowerPoint presentation trips up many people. Speaking in front of an audience can be very intimidating. But stammering or the constant use of "um" as a verbal placeholder weakens the presentation. If you used "um" a lot, add that to your list of things to improve.

Write a draft of the self-evaluation by elaborating on each of your listed points. Convert each point into a separate sentence, paragraph or section, depending upon the required length of your self-evaluation. While you shouldn't be unduly harsh with yourself ("My PowerPoint presentation was awful because my slides were too cluttered"), don't go too easy on yourself either. Teachers or professors will likely give you a lower grade if you claim to have given a perfect presentation.

Polish the draft. Improve the writing by eliminating passive language, checking for errors in grammar and spelling, and rewriting to make your points more concise and connected. Write an introduction describing the presentation (to remind the instructor) and a conclusion summarizing how the presentation challenged you, what you learned and what you will work on improving. An Evergreen College guide to writing a self-evaluation suggests asking yourself, "What was the single most important piece of knowledge gained?"

If you get stuck thinking of strengths and weaknesses, ask a friend who saw you give the presentation for his honest insights.
1 George Mason University: Creating an Effective Powerpoint

About the Author

First published at age 17, Kim Durant is an experienced writer with numerous published articles under her belt. A former tutor and community education teacher, she writes primarily about decorating, crafts and other creative pursuits.

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Improving Presentations through Feedback: How to Receive Helpful Responses!

After the presentation comes before the presentation – the key to improvement lies in feedback. After a presentation, every speaker tends to review the performance and evaluate it. Did it go as planned? Was I confident enough? Was I able to convince the audience?

These questions can only be inadequately answered by ourselves, as we don’t truly know how we are perceived by others – unless we simply ask them…

Why a presentation needs detailed feedback

The presentation is over. Technically, how it went doesn’t matter anymore because nothing can be changed. This perspective can be fatal. There are good reasons why professional football coaches analyze games with their teams and why teachers encourage their students to correct their mistakes in exams.

It’s about learning and training . It’s about knowing our strengths and weaknesses and working on them . Only a few people are naturally good speakers. Everyone else also benefits from practice and working on their strengths and weaknesses. To identify them and improve, feedback is the best tool.

Why self-perception isn’t enough: the Johari Window

Sure, to some extent, we can assess ourselves, and we should. Recording our own speech with a camera and tripod and watching it afterwards can be very revealing.

But self-assessment can also mislead us as it solely relies on our self-perception . And that perception can be both significantly more positive and significantly more critical than the image others have of us. Hence, for a realistic evaluation, we always need external perception.

The so-called Johari Window sheds light on this dynamic. The model by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham illustrates the dynamics of self- and external perception and is based on the idea that communication can be improved by bringing these two spheres closer together.

The model is divided into four areas :

Public Self: This is the area that both we and others can see. It includes aspects of our personality that are known to us and are also perceived by others.
Blind Spot: This represents aspects of our personality or behavior that are not consciously known to us but can be recognized by others (e.g., facial expressions or body language). It’s the blind spot in our self-perception.
Hidden Self: This involves aspects of our personality that we know but are not recognized by others. These are things we consciously hide from others.
Unknown Self: This is the area that is unknown to both us and others. It contains potential abilities, emotions, or behaviors that haven’t been discovered yet.

In the context of self-reflection after presentations, the Johari Window can be a valuable aid. After a presentation, we have a subjective perception of how we presented ourselves, but this can differ from the actual perception of the audience. This is where the concept of the blind spot comes into play.

At this point, it’s crucial to ask for feedback from your listeners. Through their insights, you can learn how you were perceived and reduce your blind spot. Moreover, you’ll find out if your messages were conveyed as planned . With the information from the feedback, you can adjust future presentations and speeches.

Overall, the Johari Window enables deeper self-reflection after presentations because it encourages actively seeking feedback to gain a more realistic and comprehensive view of presentation skills.

Why Feedback is Important in All Industries

Feedback is important regardless of your industry affiliation. It plays a crucial role in skill development, performance enhancement, and fostering personal and professional growth . We’ve compiled an overview of why feedback is important in various industries:

Academic Environment : In the education sector, feedback is a central tool to promote learning. Teachers provide students with feedback on their performance to identify strengths and weaknesses. In higher education, feedback is crucial to deepen students’ understanding and support their academic development.
Business World : In the business world, feedback plays a vital role in employee development and increasing efficiency. Regular feedback allows employees to review their performance, adjust goals, and enhance skills. Managers can use feedback to motivate teams and improve company performance. This category also includes presentations and feedback for speakers. Feedback from listeners in the business world can help adjust customer interests and further develop products.
Healthcare : Not to be underestimated – in healthcare, feedback is essential to improve clinical practice and optimize patient care. Medical professionals use feedback to refine diagnoses, adjust treatments, and increase patient satisfaction.
Technology and Engineering : In technical and engineering professions, feedback is indispensable to drive innovation and optimize products. Design and performance issues can be identified, and technical solutions can be improved. Here too, feedback through PowerPoint presentations can be important for advancing innovations.
Customer Service : In the customer service industry, feedback from customers is a key indicator of the quality of services offered. Companies use customer feedback to identify problems, make improvements, and increase customer satisfaction.
Journalism and Media : In the media industry, feedback from readers, viewers, and listeners is a significant factor. Journalists and media professionals use feedback to evaluate the relevance of content, maintain journalistic standards, and engage the audience.

Relevant Criteria for Constructive Feedback

It makes sense not to give or seek feedback in a general manner, but rather to think in specific categories. For presentation feedback, the following areas are particularly relevant:

• Content and Structure : Was the topic covered comprehensively and clearly? Was there a logical and coherent structure?

• Visualization : Was the presentation well-organized and visually appealing? Were visual aids used effectively?

• Language : Was the speaker easy to understand? How was the tone? Was the choice of words and expression appropriate?

• Body Language : How was the facial expression and gestures? Were there eye contacts? What impression did the body language convey?

How to Gather Feedback after a Presentation

How to Gather Feedback for your Presentations

Feedback generally doesn’t come on its own . If you want to receive feedback after a presentation, you need to actively seek it.

The choice of the right method to gather feedback depends on your target audience, presentation goals, and available resources . Integrating feedback tools and technologies allows presenters to collect feedback in diverse ways and continuously improve the quality of their presentations. In today’s digital era, besides seeking feedback in person, there are numerous tools and technologies that can be used to efficiently and effectively gather feedback after presentations. These tools provide innovative ways to collect, analyze, and respond to feedback. Here are some examples:

Question and Answer Session after the Presentation

The most immediate way to use feedback is through the question and answer session following the presentation. This is where both direct and indirect indications of the presentation’s success can be gathered. Indirectly, much can be inferred from the audience reactions .

Polite applause and an audience that seems eager to leave the room may not be a great sign. If there are many comprehension questions and doubtful looks, the presentation might not have been as clear and coherent as hoped.

For those seeking more detailed information, it’s possible to directly ask the audience for feedback. If it involves people you interact with frequently (such as colleagues), you can also inquire later on. However, immediate feedback isn’t always very fruitful and insightful , as many people are hesitant to openly express criticism – even if it’s constructive.

How to manage questions and answer sessions and Powerpoint can be found in our article “ PowerPoint Q&A “.

Feedback Form with Standardized Questions

A feedback form that covers all relevant criteria can be very useful. It can be distributed or made available after a talk, either in person or via email to the participants . Since a feedback form can be filled out anonymously and at one’s own pace, it’s usually more productive than directly requested feedback.

Classic email surveys are still effective for collecting detailed feedback. Tools like Mailchimp or Sendinblue can help you create and send appealing survey emails. You can easily find templates for evaluation forms on the internet. Good and clear formats can be found, for example, here: link1 and link2 .

They are practical and provide good ideas. Of course, a feedback form can also be created from scratch . You can be more creative and open in your wording (e.g., “In your opinion, what are three things that could have been done better in the presentation?”).

Send Online Surveys to Participants

A third option for requesting feedback is through online surveys . They are created using appropriate tools and made accessible to participants via a link. The structure typically resembles that of a traditional feedback form. The biggest disadvantage here is that the feedback opportunity is often only accessed by a few people.

Possible survey tools are SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and Typeform. These tools allow you to create and send tailored surveys. With pre-made templates or individually designed questions, you can specifically ask for opinions, ratings, and suggestions.

Another example of an online feedback platform is Provenexpert. Through this platform, you can easily send a survey to your participants, asking them to rate you with stars and provide a personal experience report. Of course, the more personal and closer your contact is with your audience, the more likely you are to receive a rating.

Here is my Provenexpert profile with numerous reviews I’ve collected over the years for my presentations and seminars: My proven expert profile .

Video Feedback Platforms

Platforms like VidGrid or Vosaic allow you to record your presentations and request targeted video feedback from the audience . This method offers not only verbal comments but also captures the body language and emotions of the feedback providers.

Similar to online surveys, one disadvantage is that this option is little used to provide feedback.

Feedback Apps

Feedback apps like Feedbackly, Emplify, or 15Five offer comprehensive options for gathering feedback. They enable continuous feedback, mood analysis, and team communication. For instance, you can include a QR code link within your presentation to directly reference the feedback opportunity.

Social Media Surveys

Social media provides a straightforward way to gather feedback from a broader audience . Platforms like Twitter or Instagram allow for surveys or polls to quickly gather feedback (see the next subchapter).

Real-time Audience Interaction

Platforms like Mentimeter and Slido allow you to engage the audience in real time during the presentation. Participants can answer questions, express opinions, and conduct polls . This fosters engagement while providing valuable insights.

Using Social Media for Feedback

These days, reaching people through social media is effortless. Skillfully leverage social media platforms to gather feedback. They offer an effective way to collect feedback from a wider audience and gain valuable insights into how your presentations are perceived.

Moreover, using social media has the advantage of allowing you to gather opinions from individuals across different regions and backgrounds . This way, you receive feedback from a diverse audience.

Through various forms of interaction, you can gather opinions, ratings, and suggestions from a diverse group of people. Here are some ways you can use social media platforms for feedback:

Polls and Voting : Social media platforms enable you to create polls and voting options to gather targeted feedback on specific aspects of your presentation. You can ask questions related to content, structure, or presentation style. Involving your followers allows for quick and easily understandable feedback.
Comments and Discussions : After sharing your presentation on social media platforms, you can encourage comments and discussions about your content. Readers can share their thoughts, opinions, and suggestions, fostering open feedback interaction. Collecting different perspectives can help you understand various viewpoints and identify areas for improvement.
Direct Messages : Some platforms allow users to send you direct messages. Here, you have the opportunity to receive personal feedback that might not be shared publicly. These direct conversations can offer detailed insights and encourage open exchanges.
Story Features : Platforms like Instagram and Facebook offer story features where you can post short surveys or questions. This allows you to receive real-time feedback while enhancing the interactivity of your followers.

Handling Feedback in Presentations

Dealing with presentation feedback is typically similar to handling product reviews on major online stores. There are some overly enthusiastic 5-star reviews that make you doubt their authenticity, and there are some 1-star reviews that suggest the buyer might have been simply incompetent for the product.

In between, there usually exists a larger pool of mixed reviews that mention pros and cons, which often prove to be the most helpful. Such a distribution also often emerges in feedback for presentations, and in principle, it can be dealt with in the same way. What matters are the overall impression and the relevant pointers.

When it comes to handling feedback, the following tips should also be considered:

• Welcome All Feedback : Every listener is entitled to their opinion. Regardless of the content or the person delivering it, feedback should be accepted with gratitude. It’s worth noting that the source of the feedback, whether it’s from a superior or an apprentice, shouldn’t matter.

• No Feedback on Feedback : Especially with direct critical feedback, there’s often an inclination to debate, defend, or justify. However, it’s often better to simply accept what’s said with a thank you, regardless of whether it’s perceived as justified or not.

• Feedback isn’t Binding : Speakers also have the right to their opinion. Not everything mentioned in feedback needs to be implemented. What to change or implement is ultimately a personal decision.

Feedback is Not a One-Way Street

For those who appreciate valuable feedback, they should also be able to respond appropriately when asked for their own evaluation. To make feedback truly useful and helpful, it should fulfill the following criteria:

• Be Specific : When requesting feedback, it’s not just about receiving praise or criticism; it’s about getting specific pointers. For example, rather than saying “The presentation was engaging,” it’s better to say “The use of examples to illustrate individual factors made the presentation engaging.”

• Use “I” Statements : When giving feedback, you can only speak for yourself. Therefore, use first-person statements and not terms like “one.”

• Offer Improvement Suggestions : Constructive feedback ideally should be positively formulated and include improvement ideas. For instance, instead of saying “You spoke too quickly,” you could say “I would have found it easier to follow the presentation if you had spoken slower and incorporated more pauses.”

• Include Positive Criticism : It’s often forgotten that criticism doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. Learning what aspects of a presentation were well received can be just as important for presenters.

• Describe Instead of Judge : Feedback should describe the personal perception. Judgments or accusations are inappropriate. For instance, rather than saying “Your presentation was bad because you just read from the slides,” you could say “Since you read a lot from the slides, I felt the audience interaction was lacking.”

No Feedback Without Respect

Valuable feedback is closely tied to mutual respect. This should always be kept in mind by both those providing and receiving feedback. Feedback should be seen as a means of guidance and assistance , not a tool for evaluation. When given and received correctly, feedback can be extraordinarily useful.

Moreover, constructive feedback and even criticism can mean more recognition and respect than insincere praise. This sentiment was likely acknowledged by philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell when he stated:

Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement. Bertrand Russell

Conclusion: Skillfully Gathering and Implementing Feedback

In conclusion, adeptly seeking and implementing feedback can help you keep your presentations more professional and tailor your content to your target audience. Consider which feedback-receiving method works best for you and give it a try!

If you have questions about the article, feel free to email us at [email protected] . We’re here to help!

Looking for visually supportive and professionally designed slide templates? Browse our shop. We have numerous slides available for download covering various (business) topics. Check it out today! ► Visit the Shop

You might also be interested in these articles:

Preparing Presentations: 11 Tips
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Self Reflection on 1st Presentation

Self-Critique of my first presentation Presenter: Drilona Aliu

Description of Experience

Since I was the last one to present in class, I had the advantage of seeing everyone else presenting and catching on their strategies. It seemed that all the previous presenters were very comfortable on presenting and they rarely showed any sign on nervousness. Usually, I am able to control my nervousness by giving a “talk” to myself and I imagine myself as the subject matter expert. By having these positive thoughts in my mind, I am able to control nervousness that may be created as a result of the fear of talking in front of people and sharing something very personal such as part of my childhood.

The most challenging aspect of this presentation was creating a meaningful story through an effective framework that would transmit my emotions as a child and my journey to learn English. I find it very challenging when I have a lot to share but do not know how to properly deliver my message in a logical order. While watching the DVD, I was able to identify that this challenge was evident although I tried to hide it as I was speaking. The most surprising aspect of my speech was that I used a lot of facial expressions. This might have always been the case but because I never watched myself presenting I have not been able to identify this habit. I could have done better in certain areas such as volume and speech rate, but I believe that I gave a good overall impression.

I believe that my first speech was effective and kept the audience interested. There is more room to improve upon the introduction and conclusion such as engaging the audience in my opening question: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Such questions are always a good way to start the speech as it keeps the audience interested. I also think that due to time management constraints, I could have done a better job on the conclusion such as ending my speech how this journey affected the path I chose in life. This would “justify” how English has played a role in my life and how he has influenced my personal and professional growth.

I believe that my delivery was generally clear and organized; however, while watching the DVD I noticed that I need to work more on the speech flow and find effective ways to engage the audience. My posture and eye contact were good but I definitely need to work on my speech rate, such as making more pauses so the audience is able to “digest” the information provided and not feel overwhelmed with the amount of the information at a fast pace. I also think I “overdid” my hand gestures and this is something that I need to improve. Being from the Balkan region, it is part of our culture to excessively use hands when we talk. We are very expressive that way and that may be distracting for many people in the audience. There is also room for eliminating fillers such as um as I tend to use them quite a bit, especially in the beginning of my speech.

Overall, I believe that I have many strengths such as the ability to speak without feeling overwhelmed or very nervous, to quickly think and avoid mistakes without getting frustrated (mistakes are for human beings), and to deliver my speech with effective voice projection and eye contact. The main areas for improvement would be to engage the audience as they may relate more to my speech, use fewer facial and hand gestures, speak at a slower pace and make appropriate pauses, and use fewer fillers throughout the speech.

As a result, my goals to improve in public speaking are:

Effectively organize and clearly deliver my main points. Each main point should be backed up with effective supporting points and examples to make it more illustrative for the audience. The steps I would take to improve on this goal are to develop a detailed speech outline and rehearse it several times while timing itso I do not run out of time.
Improve my speech rate. I tend to talk too fast and make very few or short pauses. It is my goal to improve my speaking pace so the audience will be able to follow it better. This can be achieved through multiple rehearsals and ability to select only worthy arguments (quantity vs quality).
Last but not least is hand gesture control. Watching myself on the DVD made me realize that I use my hands a lot when I speak and sometimes that can be distracting for the audience. I need to work on using my hand gestures appropriately and a way to improve that is through recording myself every time I deliver a speech and reviewing it as that is something I do unconsciously.

There are many other things to improve and I am confident that I will be able to incorporate these changes in my next presentation!

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30 Self-Reflection Examples

self-reflection examples and definition, explained below

Self-reflection is the internal process of analyzing oneself with the intent of making more informed decisions, improving oneself, and setting realistic goals.

Christian (2020) defines it as below:

“Self-reflection is when you seriously take time to think about your character and behavior, analyzing where it comes from, what it means to you, is ‘working’ for you, and what you can do about it.”

Self-reflection can help us to increase our awareness of weaknesses and strengths, clarify our values and priorities (Lim et al., 2019), and improve cognitive function (Goupil & Kouider, 2019; Lyons & Zelazo, 2011).

It offers us the opportunity to pause, consider, and critically examine our thoughts, emotions, and motivations.

The key components of self-reflection are introspection, analysis, and willingness to accept self-criticism – aspects that contribute significantly to personal growth (Travers, Morisano & Locke, 2015). Prolonged practice of self-reflection can, therefore, enhance personal development and improve overall quality of life (Ardelt & Grunwald, 2018).

Self-Reflection Examples

Method 1: Journaling Journaling is a method of self-reflection that involves writing down thoughts, feelings, and experiences consistently. It serves as a personal space for you to express emotions and ideas, providing you with a record to reference and evaluate later on (Christian, 2020; Giguere, 2012). Over time, this reflection can highlight patterns, progress, and areas for development.

Method 2: Meditation Meditation is a practice that involves spending a period of time focusing your mind. Two main approaches involve completely emptying your mind (Ardelt & Grunwald, 2018). When thoughts enter the mind, the practitioner notices it then stops the thought, returning to a state of thoughtlessness. Over time, this approach leads to enhanced calmness. Another approach is to focus on one thing that you’re concerned about, focusing on it and reflecting on it for a sustained period of time.

Method 3: Mindfulness Mindfulness is similar to meditation but practiced throughout the day. The idea is to focus on your own body and mind throughout the day, being aware of how your thoughts are driving your behaviors and how your body is reacting to things like tiredness or strain (Ardelt & Grunwald, 2018). This method helps you remain present in the moment and develop deeper understanding of how you’re feeling at all times. By doing this regularly, you may become more aware of your mental and emotional states, and better equipped to understand and control them.

Method 4: Professional Therapy Engaging with a trained professional provides a safe space to navigate personal issues. Therapists can offer constructive tools and techniques to encourage productive self-reflection (Prasco et al., 2012). By bringing into the open internal dialogues that you may struggle to interpret alone, therapy can enhance your capacity to understand and address personal challenges.

Method 5: Artistic Expression Creating art can be therapeutic and reflective. It’s a non-structured process that helps to explore suppressed emotions, issues, and experiences (Christian, 2020; Diamond, 2023). Whether it’s painting, writing poetry, or playing a musical instrument, the act of creating can help you express different emotions, leading to insights into your own motivations and feelings.Benefits of Self-Reflection

Method 6: Goal Setting and Reflection Goal-setting involves putting in place intentional goals or milestones that you need to meet. This helps you to be more self-reflective because you’re able to reflect on your progress toward an objective goal and think about whether you’re on track. If you’re not on track, you can pivot and adjust to get back on the path to success. I recommend the SMART Goals Method for setting both short-term goals and long-term goals .

Method 7: Feedback Analysis Feedback analysis involves contemplating the feedback received from others. I find that, too often, students get feedback from me (and other teachers) and they don’t even read it. They just care about the top-line grade! This is not self-reflection. Self-reflection would involve actually looking at the feedback and thinking about how to take it on board in order to improve your work next time.

Method 8: Self-Assessment Quizzes Taking self-assessment quizzes can be another useful self-reflection method. These quizzes can shed light on strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and behavioral tendencies. These often depend upon the tasks, but one good method is to lay out a set of desired outcomes before doing a task, then self-assessing once the task has completed, giving yourself a grade for each outcome. Once this is done, you can think about how to improve on each aspect.

Method 9: Solitude and Silence Embracing solitude and silence is another powerful tool for self-reflection. It allows for introspection without the distraction of external noise or influences. For example, you could take yourself for a walk each afternoon to clear your head and think about the day. Other people prefer to go fishing, or even pair this up with journalling, by taking your journal out to the forest to write and think.

Method 10: Coaching or Counselling Engaging in professional coaching or counseling can facilitate self-reflection. Trained professionals can ask probing questions and provide non-biased insights that initiate deeper self-reflection. For example, many CEOs and high-performing athletes have mentors and coaches who help them think through their bottlenecks and difficulties, which can help them to squeeze out those extra few percent of higher performance each week.

Method 11: Reflective Conversations Reflective conversations involve discussing personal experiences and thoughts with trusted friends, peers, family, and mentors. These conversations foster deeper self-understanding and provide opportunities to view issues from different perspectives. Some of my best lightbulb moments of self-reflection have come through conversations with my very insightful sister, who is really good at asking the right probing questions and summarizing my muddled thoughts!

Method 12: Philosophical Inquiry Philosophical inquiry involves in-depth questioning about the nature of human existence and purpose. Through exploratory questions and discussions of philosophical tenets, deeper self-reflection is induced. This process assists in shaping your core beliefs and core values . Some people might do this by reflecting on secular philosophy, while others might turn to the philosophical and spiritual writings of their religious traditions.

Method 13: Role-Play Scenarios Role-play scenarios can allow you to experiment with different perspectives or behaviors in a controlled setting. This can enable a greater understanding of your own reactions and actions within different contexts. This serves to highlight patterns of behavior and areas of growth or change. We do this often in education, but therapists and counsellors also do it, which allows the student or patient to think about things from other people’s perspectives, displacing their own ego momentarily to achieve breakthroughs.

Method 14: Mind Mapping Mind mapping is a graphical technique for visualizing connections between various ideas and concepts. By creating a mind map about a topic related to yourself and your struggles, you can gain valuable insights into how you perceive different aspects of your life and how each of those aspects interconnect. This is a beneficial tool to visually organize and structure thoughts, allowing for deeper self-reflection.

Method 15: Visualization Techniques Visualization techniques allow you to create a mental image or scenario to explore thoughts, feelings, and desires. Through this, you can envision your future goals or replay past experiences to gain a different perspective. This method is often used with children, whose visualizations (often in the form of drawings) can display what the child is thinking and feeling about a topic.

Method 16: Personal SWOT Analysis A personal SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities Threats) analysis encourages you to look deeply at personal characteristics and environments. It allows an assessment of personal attributes and the external factors that can influence them. This type of analysis helps you to strategically plan for personal and professional development, and is a good starting tool for goal-setting and planning, so you can both avoid threats on the horizon and position yourself best to embrace any upcoming opportunities.

Method 17: Daily Milestones Documenting and assessing your daily achievements and steps toward your milestones – no matter how small – can help to promote personal self-reflection and self-growth. This guides you in celebrating successes every single day, while also acknowledging failures and thinking about how you could use new strategies to reach your milestones. This daily habit can instill a sense that you are, in fact, making progress every day.

Method 18: Guided Reflective Activities Guided reflection exercises, such as prompted journaling or organized workshops, can facilitate in-depth insights. Often, these activities encourage participants to confront difficult thoughts and experiences. Through these guided activities, you can explore your struggles and challenges in more structured ways.

Method 19: Digital Detox Digital detox involves refraining from using digital devices for a sustained period of time. While this isn’t an overt form of reflection, you may find that by no longer having your phone as a distraction, you can then open up space and time to think more deeply. By reducing reliance on digital technology, an individual can refocus their attention back on their thoughts and experiences in real-life contexts. Digital detox periods are often cited for allowing the space for much-needed introspection and self-reflection.

Method 20: Being Among Nature Becoming an observer of nature and embracing the natural environment can support self-reflection. Nature inherently promotes calm and mindfulness, which can provide an ideal setting for introspective thoughts. Observing the rhythm and patterns in nature can, in many cases, be reflective of one’s life patterns, stimulating profound self-reflection.

Did you Know? British Columbia, a province in Canada, allows doctors to prescribe national parks passes to people with depression. This is in recognition of the restorative power of nature.

Method 21: TED Talks and Podcasts Delving into thought-provoking TED Talks or podcasts can stimulate self-reflection. They often provide unique perspectives and compelling stories which can challenge our existing beliefs. By reflecting on these insights, individuals can foster a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

Method 22: Mantras and Affirmations Creating personalized mantras or affirmations serves as a tool for self-reflection. These mantras or affirmations, when repeated regularly, aid in challenging and reshaping assumptions about oneself. They can help in cultivating positive beliefs and focusing on personal growth objectives.

Method 2 3: Dream Analysis Analyzing dreams and their symbolism can induce a form of self-reflection. Interpreting the situations, characters, and emotions presented in dreams can reveal subconscious thoughts and feelings. Here, dream analysis can form an important part of an introspective journey. But beware – dream analysis enters into the realm of pseudoscience .

Method 2 4: Narrative Therapy Using narrative therapy techniques fosters self-reflection by encouraging you to tell your life story. It provides an opportunity to review your life from a different perspective, recognizing dominant narratives and addressing inherent bias. It enables us to rewrite our narrative, shaping a more constructive view of ourselves and our life.

Method 2 5: Practice of Empathy Active empathy towards others promotes self-reflection, as it requires understanding the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of others. By stepping into someone else’s shoes, we can gain insights into our own biases and feelings. Thus, empathy can act as a mirror that reflects our values and beliefs.

Method 2 6: Retreats and Workshops Participating in personal growth retreats and workshops offer an immersive experience that often prompts introspection. These platforms facilitate structured exercises, group discussions, and introspective practices that enable individuals to understand themselves deeply. Retreats create a supportive environment conducive to intensive self-reflection and personal insight.

Method 2 7: Personality Tests Taking personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) contributes to self-reflection by breaking down individual characteristics. These tests assess a range of personality aspects, providing a comprehensive insight into oneself. Based on this, individuals can recognize their inherent traits and consider ways to leverage or improve them.

Method 2 8: Exploring Cultural Differences Exploring cultural diversity or visiting new places can trigger self-reflection. It facilitates understanding different worldviews, which in turn, encourages introspection about one’s cultural lens and biases . Interacting with various cultures can highlight where our attitudes and behaviors come from, prompting self-reflection.

Method 2 9: Gratitude Practice Keeping a gratitude journal, or simply pondering what you’re grateful for, incites self-reflection. By focusing on the positive aspects of life, gratitude practices foster an understanding of what truly matters to us. Gratitude helps refocus our thoughts and feelings, promoting a deeper sense of self-awareness .

Method 30: Life Milestone Review Reviewing life milestones can provoke powerful self-reflection. By examining major life events, individuals can evaluate personal growth, changes in values, and turning points. This method provides an opportunity for individuals to appreciate their journeys, achievements, and learn from past experience.

Ardelt, M., & Grunwald, S. (2018). The importance of self-reflection and awareness for human development in hard times. Research in Human Development , 15 (3-4), 187-199. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15427609.2018.1489098

Christian, S. (2020). Self-Reflection: The Key to an Amazing Life . Independent.

Diamond, L. K. (2023). Art as Self-reflection in Nurse Practitioner Role Transition . Nurse Educator , 10-1097.

Giguere, M. (2012). Self-reflective journaling: A tool for assessment. Journal of Dance Education , 12 (3), 99-103. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2012.701168

Goupil, L., & Kouider, S. (2019). Developing a reflective mind: From core metacognition to explicit self-reflection . Current Directions in Psychological Science , 28 (4), 403-408.

Lim, C. Y., Berry, A. B., Hartzler, A. L., Hirsch, T., Carrell, D. S., Bermet, Z. A., & Ralston, J. D. (2019, May). Facilitating self-reflection about values and self-care among individuals with chronic conditions. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).

Lyons, K. E., & Zelazo, P. D. (2011). Monitoring, metacognition, and executive function : Elucidating the role of self-reflection in the development of self-regulation. Advances in child development and behavior , 40 , 379-412. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386491-8.00010-4

Prasko, J., Mozny, P., Novotny, M., Slepecky, M., & Vyskocilova, J. (2012). Self-reflection in cognitive behavioural therapy and supervision. Biomedical Papers of the Medical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc , 156 (4).

Travers, C. J., Morisano, D., & Locke, E. A. (2015). Self‐reflection, growth goals, and academic outcomes: A qualitative study. British journal of educational psychology , 85 (2), 224-241.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
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Examining the importance of student self-reflection in a presentation skills course

Presentation courses are becoming more prevalent at Japanese universities. This paper focuses on one small cohort of students (n=5) that took an elective presentation skills course at Nanzan University. The paper initially looks at some of the salient themes related to teaching presentation skills and then outlines the design of the course. The main focus of the paper is on the students' reflective comments on the course and how it affected their presentation skills. Finally, some example guidelines are offered for teachers who are teaching similar courses.

Related Papers

Tony Cripps

This paper explores a 'Teaching with Technology' course taught at Nanzan University, Japan. Although our students are considered to be 'digital natives' many of them do not know how to use technology effectively in a teaching environment. Students (n =12) on this elective course were asked to consider their thoughts on technology in general, and how they would incorporate technology into English courses in Japan. The students gave presentations on using technology to support learners at Japanese junior high and senior high schools. Five main data collection sources were used: 1) A questionnaire on attitudes to technology 2) Videos of students' presentations 3) Reflective material generated throughout the course 4) End of course peer interviews 5) End of course self-reflection reports. These five main data sources were analysed using a grounded theory approach. The paper examines the students' thoughts on educational technology, future trends in education, ubiquitous technology, and ubiquitous learning.

This is the application and supporting materials compiled for my Advanced Graduate Teacher Certificate from Purdue's Center for Instructional Excellence.

Melvin Andrade

Center for Academic …

Hassan Belhiah

21st century classrooms are gearing towards student-centered classrooms where learning is deemed to be more meaningful when students are actively engaged in their learning. In a bid to create more student-centered classrooms, the researcher decided to explore the use of peer assessments and reflective discussions in a Technical Communication classroom as part of an action research to improve student participation and oral presentation performance among thirty 18-year-old diploma students studying in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia. The study revealed the students in general have a positive perception towards the use of peer assessment and reflective discussion in the classroom. In addition to increased participation and attentiveness in class, improvement in oral presentation performance for the majority of the students (73.3%) was observed. This research shows that with careful planning and scaffolding, positive results can be achieved by employing these two techniques in the teaching and learning process. .

This paper discusses how electronic media can be woven into an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course in order to provide a dynamic and supportive learning environment. The author briefly outlines the objectives and design of an ESP course at a Japanese University and explains how various forms of electronic media are woven into the course. Practical examples of electronic media integration are provided with specific focus on the provision of online support for students. The paper also examines student and teacher reaction to the course and how it is being improved.

Rebecca Winsome Steven

Martin Dutton , Arizio Sweeting

The purpose of this action research (AR) project was to aid students preparing for the Cambridge English Knowledge About Language (KAL) module of the Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT) at the Institute of Continuing and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Education at the University of Queensland (ICTE-UQ), Brisbane, Australia. KAL tests students’ ability to recognise concepts of English language systems in the areas of lexis, phonology, grammar and discourse. In our project, we wanted to specifically improve our students’ ability to answer questions on connected speech in this test, where they needed to identify the processes of elision, intrusion, assimilation, weak forms, or consonant– vowel linking. We did this by developing and trialling a range of activities involving different interaction patterns, macro-skills work, and learner styles. We concluded that speaking and listening practice should be used as a way of strengthening knowledge of connected speech for the purposes of a KAL test. We also conceptualised that students needed to develop an ability to hear the sounds between connected words in their minds, which we called ‘auditory thinking’.

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Many university students in Japan are unaware of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their potential for learning. This paper explicates one cohort’s exploration of MOOCs. A group of students (n=12) taking a ‘Teaching with Technology’ course at Nanzan University was encouraged to explore online courses provided by platforms such as Coursera, edX, and FutureLearn, as part of a semester- long research project. The overarching aim of the project was to broaden the students’ knowledge of this growing field and they were given free rein to navigate the MOOC terrain in any way they wished. Throughout the project each student kept a diary in which they logged both their MOOC use, and their opinions of the courses. Interviews, diaries, focus groups, reports, and questionnaires all provided rich data. The author briefly outlines the design of the project, before discussing in detail the students’ experiences of mapping the MOOC terrain.

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Student Presentation Reflections

Teachers as Paragons

I struggle with articulating this point, but for the purposes of this post, I think that the most valid student-teacher dynamic is not the Jedi Master and Padawan method, but instead one where a teacher serves as a paragon of a small set of skills/attributes and the student’s role is to assimilate their experiences with all of their teachers into their own paradigm.

While this viewpoint is not revolutionary, I find that hubris often prevents a teacher from maximizing the benefit of this approach. Too often I find myself or my peers trying to be too many things to too many students. I think it is important for a teacher to make explicit commitments about which skill or attribute they wish to be the avatar for.

I chose presentation skills as my niche of instruction because I benefited greatly from the Public Speaking and Speech and Debate classes I took in high school. When I was in college, I saw very clearly those of my peers who did not have those same opportunities. I vowed that my students would be afforded opportunities to develop their presentation skills in my class no matter the other classes offered by my school.

Reflection Process

I plan on creating many posts about the different resources, examples, and assignments that I use to improve my students’ presentation skills. One of the core strategies, and I believe the most powerful, that I use to improve student presentations is a presentation reflection process.

In order to make presentation reflections be a valid assignment, you must film your students as they present—something that my 11th grade Public Speaking teacher Mrs. Shank did for me 15 years ago. Admittedly, being filmed for a presentation was nerve-wracking; however, it was also amazing beneficial. However, instead of recording presentations on VHS cassette like Mrs. Shank did, I record presentations digitally and post them as unlisted YouTube videos .

Recording Presentations

Do yourself a favor and make sure that you use a tripod to record the student presentations. You might think you can cobble together books and tape to hold a camera steady, but this is the wrong call.

If you plan on using your phone as the camera, you will need a mount to attach it to your tripod , and an improved microphone will certainly help with the audio quality, but it’s not necessary.
If you plan on using a DSLR or mirrorless camera, then you really need to improve the audio. To improve the quality of the video’s captured sound, I suggest using a shotgun microphone .

Whatever hardware you use, it is important to share with the students the camera’s field of view, so they know where they should stand. The reflection assignment is much harder if the student does not appear on camera.

Reflection Assignment

Recording the presentation is the first step, but students will need to thoughtfully watch their presentations to see areas for improvement. To guide the students’ thoughts while they watch their presentation video, I developed three sequential reflection assignments, one for each of the major presentations in my class.

This reflection process is truly eye-opening. Students are routinely shocked when they watch the video and see the nervous fidgeting or hand-wringing that they swear never happened. The pedagogical impact of a student watching themselves on video is many times more powerful than even the most helpful rubric or feedback.

In addition to reflecting on what happened, an important part of the assignment is also identifying five points on which to improve and coming up with action items for each point. An example of an improvement point and an action item would be:

I will look up the phonetic pronunciation of the words ahead of time and practice saying them to my teacher.

I always assign this as homework and give students a week to do the assignment after their presentation. I try very hard to make sure the videos get processed, uploaded, and shared with the students as soon as possible to make sure that things are fresh in their mind.

Students sometimes balk at the number of words they have to write. However, since they are writing semi-informally about themselves and have a video to go off, students routinely surpass 1000 words without blinking an eye.

Sometimes when I explain presentation reflections to teachers, they exclaim that it is too much work for them to do or they don’t know how to do the “video stuff” or something else along those lines. The video recording/editing process can be as basic or as advanced as you want it to be. Since video editing is a core part of my multimedia business, there is a lot of stuff that I do to the videos that is unnecessary but a point of pride for me.

In all honesty, a perfectly functional presentation video takes less than 3 minutes more than the presentation itself. Whether you spend 3 minutes or 30 minutes editing a presentation video, that time is returned many-fold by the presentation skill increase of your students.

Hands down, the most consistent piece of feedback I receive from alumni is that they dominate their presentations in college. This makes me very proud. I committed to developing presentation skills in my students since my very first year of teaching. Hearing back from alumni that they are drastically better than their peers at presenting puts a smile on my face every time.

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50 Best Reflective Essay Examples (+Topic Samples) ᐅ TemplateLab
Self-Reflection PowerPoint Presentation Slides
Self Reflection PowerPoint Template
Self Reflection PowerPoint Template
Self-Reflection PowerPoint Presentation Slides
Self-Reflection PowerPoint Presentation Slides

VIDEO

Vlog Peer Feedback & Reflection Presentation Slides
Self Reflection after 15 years
Self reflection is a key part in evolving
E232: Self-Reflection Presentation Group B
E232: Self-Reflection Presentation
Baldur's Gate 3: Minthara's self-reflection after Orin's death (ACT 3)

COMMENTS

Self-Reflection: Benefits and How to Practice
For instance, say you gave a presentation at school or work that didn't go well, despite putting in a lot of work on the project. Spending a little time on self-reflection can help you understand that even though you spent a lot of time working on the project and creating the presentation materials, you didn't practice giving the presentation.
PDF Self-evaluation after a presentation
Self-evaluation after a presentation Giving a presentation at university is a learning opportunity, so it is always a good idea to reflect on how to improve for next time. Use the following questions to support your reflection. If the answer to any of the questions is 'no', decide what action you will take to improve for next time.
Don't Underestimate the Power of Self-Reflection
Reflections that involved one or more or of these sentiments proved to be the most valuable in helping the leaders grow. Surprise, frustration, and failure. Cognitive, emotional, and behavioral ...
Self-reflection following a presentation
The importance of self-reflection following a presentation. After delivering a presentation it is easy to forget about it and move on to the next task. However to grow as a speaker it is important to reflect on what went well and what could be improved upon. This is an important practice whether you are presenting to a few people or a few ...
Self-reflection: What it is + 8 ways to do it properly
6. Consider Writing Your Thoughts Down. Some people might find it useful to make notes of their thoughts as they are reflecting on themselves. Writing in a journal is a popular way to do this as it keeps everything in one place and allows you to look back on what you've thought previously to keep you on the right path.
Self-Reflection: 3 Strategies That Actually Work
Self-reflection is a strategic tool for actionable change. While the self-reflection process might seem abstract or time-consuming, it doesn't have to be that way. With the right techniques, it won't take a lot of time and it also offers powerful real-world benefits. In this article, I'll provide 3 helpful frameworks for self-reflection.
13 Self Reflection Worksheets & Templates to Use in Therapy
Fostering Reflection Skills: The Basics. While reflection has no single, universal definition, Aronson (2011, p. 200) frames it as the "process of analyzing, questioning, and reframing an experience in order to make an assessment of it for the purposes of learning (reflective learning) and/or improve practice (reflective practice)." It has multiple uses in various contexts.
How to Nail the Q&A After Your Presentation
Beforehand, think through the types of questions audience members might ask. Put yourself in your shoes and ask yourself what concerns they might have about how your message impacts their job ...
How to Write a Self Evaluation for a Powerpoint Presentation
PowerPoint presentations offer the dual challenge of first putting together useful, engaging slides, and then presenting the slides in an effective and informative way. Writing a self-evaluation after giving such a presentation will help you pinpoint your strengths and identify the skills you could stand to improve. ...
Give Better Presentations Through Feedback!
After the presentation comes before the presentation - the key to improvement lies in feedback. After a presentation, every speaker tends to review the performance and evaluate it. ... In the context of self-reflection after presentations, the Johari Window can be a valuable aid. After a presentation, we have a subjective perception of how we ...
Self Reflection on 1st Presentation
Self Reflection on 1st Presentation. Self-Critique of my first presentation Presenter: Drilona Aliu. Description of Experience. Since I was the last one to present in class, I had the advantage of seeing everyone else presenting and catching on their strategies. It seemed that all the previous presenters were very comfortable on presenting and ...
PDF A Specific Implementation of Reflective Journals in Self ...
Keywords : Self-regulated learning, reflection journal, academic presentation skills, self-regulation 1. INTRODUCTION As Bayraktaroğlu (2017) puts it 'when we encourage students to focus on the process of ... performance or volitional control (during), and self-reflection (after) phases. The forethought phase includes task analysis and self ...
30 Self-Reflection Examples (2024)
Method 1: Journaling. Journaling is a method of self-reflection that involves writing down thoughts, feelings, and experiences consistently. It serves as a personal space for you to express emotions and ideas, providing you with a record to reference and evaluate later on (Christian, 2020; Giguere, 2012).
PDF Follow-Up Activity: Debate Evaluation and Self-Reflection
Microsoft Word - Follow up activity- Debate Evaluation and Self reflection.docx. Follow-Up Activity: Debate Evaluation and Self-Reflection. After the debate, answer the following questions to evaluate your own performance and those of your team and the opposing team: 1. Which team were you on, pro or con?
20 Self-Reflection Questions to Get Learners Thinking
Self-reflection presents some of the most powerful instructional opportunities in our classrooms and workplaces. Its potency is in how it exercises multiple skills. We're talking about the skills that make our students successful, such as critical thinking, personal responsibility, useful failure, adaptability, and more.
160 Questions to Ask After a Presentation
Questions to Ask After a Business Presentation. Can you elaborate on the primary objectives and expected outcomes of this business initiative? How does this strategy align with the overall mission and vision of the company? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you'll be monitoring to gauge success?
The impact of goal orientation, self-reflection and personal
Self-reflection is one of the three phases of self-regulation: forethought, performance and selfreflection, and composed of the two processes of self-judgment and self-reactions (Zimmerman, 2000). Reflecting is a meta-cognitive activity which includes evaluation of effort, time-allocation, strategies and learning aids (Masui & Decorte, 2005).
Examining the importance of student self-reflection in a presentation
Examining the importance of student self-reflection in a presentation skills course Anthony CRIPPS Abstract Presentation courses are becoming more prevalent at Japanese universities. This paper focuses on one small cohort of students (n=5) that took an elective presentation skills course at Nanzan University. The paper initially looks at some ...
Student Presentation Reflections
To guide the students' thoughts while they watch their presentation video, I developed three sequential reflection assignments, one for each of the major presentations in my class. This reflection process is truly eye-opening. Students are routinely shocked when they watch the video and see the nervous fidgeting or hand-wringing that they ...
20 Transformative Group Activity Examples for Self-Reflection
Skill-Sharing Workshops: Members teach each other something they're good at, followed by a group reflection on the learning process. Vision Board Creation: Building a collective vision board that reflects the group's aspirations and shared vision. Mind Mapping: Creating a mind map of the group's thoughts and ideas on a particular subject.
5 Importance of Reflecting after a Lesson Presentation
1. Self-evaluation. Reflecting on a lesson presentation is a crucial process in the process of improving teaching skills. It allows you as the presenter to evaluate your performance and identify your areas of strength and weakness so that you can improve your teaching skills and become a more effective teacher.
(PDF) A Specific Implementation of Reflective Journals in Self
Hence, this study aims to investigate self-reflective journal writing on university students' self-regulation strategies in a scope of academic presentation and speaking course. An exploratory ...
Self-Reflection PowerPoint Presentation Slides
Use our high-quality Self Reflection PowerPoint template to depict the process through which people can analyze their behavior, actions, beliefs, emotions, and goals to attain growth in life. Download the deck now to take your presentations to the next level. Usage.