Lead Smarter, Not Harder: Self reflection is your superpower!

Have you ever surprised yourself? Said or did something and thought - that wasn’t me!

Who was it? How can you surprise yourself? Who surprises whom?

You are not alone. We all have parts of ourselves that we are not fully aware of, such as habits, beliefs, emotions, values. These hidden aspects of ourselves influence our actions and decisions, sometimes in ways that are not aligned with our goals and intentions.

🪞 Reveal the Unknown

Reflection on your actions (a meeting, event, presentation, game, etc.) enables you to reveal the hidden parts of yourself. By setting aside time to think deeply about your thoughts, motivations, actions, reactions, and feedback, you begin to notice patterns, which are essentially habits forming your character and leadership style.

💪 Take control of your leadership journey

Once you're aware of these habits, you are empowered to make choices about them: Discard those that are counterproductive, Keep the beneficial ones, and Modify those that need a little tweaking. Self-reflection enables you to make conscious choices about what kind of leader you want to be.

🚀 The Domino Effect: Reflection as a Cornerstone Habit

Think of reflection as a cornerstone habit—a practice that triggers a powerful chain reaction, aligning many other habits toward a common goal - becoming a more effective and mindful leader.

💡 Learn from failures AND successes

Remember, it's important to reflect on both what went well and what went wrong. People often tend to focus too much on failures and challenges, but it's equally important to understand why something went really well so that you can replicate it.

👣 Next Steps: Making Reflection a Habit

1. Choose how you want to reflect: journaling, thinking walk, recorded voice messages, etc.

2. Set aside time: start with 2 minutes a day and build it from there (I do about 10 min a day). Put it in your calendar/reminder!

3. Ask the right questions: What was significant yesterday? What went well/not so well? Why? What did I learn?

4. Take action: See if your insight can be transformed into a task in your to-do list (e.g., buy gym membership) or into your calendar (e.g., block out time for exercise).

Action is the highest level of learning.

But Action without Reflection is a lost learning.

🎯 Leadership Insight: if you want a more detailed guide, you can read about how I reflect on a regular basis, and how I use a special structure to make my reflections capture more and become actionable: HERE

📚 Book of the week: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Reflection is a habit! To learn how habits are formed, I recommend this amazing book. Here are some of my key insights:

Reflection enables change! Top performers engage in reflection and review, often recording their progress, areas for improvement, and other relevant details. This process of self-awareness and evaluation can be beneficial in habit formation.

Use old habit as a trigger for a new habit - After an old habit, introduce the new habit. This ties the desired behavior into something you already do each day, making it easier to remember & follow through. Eg. Each time I make my coffee in the morning (old habit), I will journal for 5 mins j(new habit)

Practice repetition, not perfection - Repeating an activity helps your brain become more efficient. Even if you forget to journal for a week, just come back to it. If you only have 1 minute, write down one thought for today. It's not about perfection, but persistence and consistency.

Results from new habits might take a bit of time - be patient - progress is not always linear and immediate results may not be visible.

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✊ Until next time, let reflection shed light on your path!

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