Reflection: A Powerful Tool for Transformation

At the time I am writing this, I am a few short weeks away from celebrating another year of life. This is always a special time for me. In the weeks leading up to my birthday, I take time to get my journal and reflect on the last year of my life. This time of reflection always leads to powerful moments of awareness, results in epiphanies, and also facilitates my growth, development, and maturation. I do not just want to get older. I want to grow in love, wisdom, and truth with every year of my life. I want to share a few insights with you about the power of reflection and how it can transform your life.

1. You should take time regularly for reflection. As I just shared, I am a few weeks away from celebrating another year of life. During the weeks leading up to my birthday, I always set aside some time to think, reflect and assess my life. I look for the lessons I have learned, I scrutinize how my experiences have shaped me in the last year and I evaluate whether or not I have maximized moments in my life. Most of all, I ask myself one critical question: how have I grown and evolved in the last year? This exercise has transformed my life and served as a powerful catalyst for goal setting, life shifts, and personal growth and development. If you are not taking time to reflect, I encourage you to make this a regular part of your life. If you never take the time to reflect, you will inevitably repeat cycles in your life and live dominated by regrets. Reflection is powerful because it empowers us to make adjustments and accelerate the course of our lives.
2. You must understand that you cannot grow without reflection. People celebrate birthdays every single day. Unfortunately, many people are celebrating but they are not changing. Furthermore, I would venture out to say that many are existing but they are not growing. It only requires breath to exist. On the other hand, it requires effort and intentionality to grow. In this self-help era of positivity, I am concerned that many have adopted the belief that change is magical. What I know from years of experience is that change cannot happen without the total engagement of your mind. As someone that has trained and developed leaders around the world, I have talked to so many leaders that feel stuck in their lives. The thing that troubles me is that so many people are okay with being stuck. Reflection is important because I have discovered that you cannot grow without it. Anything that you are unwilling to assess you will never be empowered to alter. In addition, anything that you avoid will restrict the advancement of your life. Reflection requires us to examine the weak places in our lives and to sure up those places so that they do not ultimately sabotage our success. Reflection is necessary to ultimately reroute your life.
3. Reflection is the greatest mechanism for personal accountability. Another reason that I enjoy reflection is that it makes me responsible for the decisions that I am making and the actions that I am taking. In other words, reflection eliminates the excuses in our lives and forces us to be accountable for our actions. Oftentimes we believe out of sight means out of mind. However, reflection brings things to the surface often making them top of mind. Accountability is necessary because it prevents us from living in denial and deception. Accountability forces us to face the truth about our lives. Reflection is a great mechanism for personal accountability because it requires introspection. In other words, reflection requires us to take a journey within so that we can ultimately make changes in our outer world. You cannot correct what you refuse to inspect. Inspection is not for our embarrassment. Inspection is for our evolution.
4. Reflection is necessary for the transformation of your life. While I am respected around the world as a thought leader, I cannot ignore weaknesses and expect to show up in the world as powerful. Too many people want to present their best selves to the world but they refuse to deal with the broken places within their souls. Living your life in neutrality may bring you a sense of relief but it will never revolutionize your life. Reflection is a prophetic excavator uprooting the things in us that have the potential to unravel our lives. Many people are afraid of reflection. Why is that? They are afraid of what they will discover. Furthermore, they are afraid to silence the noise in their lives and unpack what is really going on deep within. Reflection will expose every enemy to your prophetic destiny. You need to illuminate the soul so that you can address every ill of the soul that is robbing you of a life of significance and fulfillment. It is the things that we bury that block us from living a better life.