4 Ways to Improve your Well-Being and Become Successful
The Art and Science of Self-Reflection
Think: How Many People in the World Pause and Reflect regularly?
Some groups of people whom I could think about and think would be a proper representative group of people who perform this task of self-reflection are — Buddhists, Meditators, and people from some other groups (entrepreneurs, bloggers, and some dilettantes).
- Buddhists: The presumptuous masters of this trade. The number of people who practice Buddhism — 535 million.
- Meditators: are also supposed to be good at this and should be reflecting on their lives regularly (what else could they be doing? — sleeping! 🤷). The number of people who meditate — 200 to 500 million
- Some entrepreneurs, bloggers and some dilettantes: another 500 million
In the real world, there will be a lot of overlap among these groups of people. People who meditate might practice Buddhism, entrepreneurs might be meditators and vice-versa. But for the sake of convenience, let’s assume all these groups to be independent that is, a person who practices Buddhism is neither a meditator nor an entrepreneur nor a blogger nor a dilettante. Now that we took care of mathematical fallacies that might arise, at the most numbers of people who ‘pause and reflect’ regularly is — 1.535 billion (~19.7% of the current human population)
Whereas the number of people who are successful in life (wealth wise) < 1%. We are not faring any better in keeping with the goals that we set for ourselves. People who follow through their goals are just 8%.
You may argue the terms ‘success’ and ‘failure’ are subjective but every person sets goals for himself/herself right. What does this say about us? — we are very poor in self-reflection and even more worse at actually using it to our advantage successfully. Humans try to keep themselves busy.
Humans have been keeping themselves busy before the advent of social media and the internet as well — religion, farming, wars, etc. We are so prone to think that any reflection on the past is going to increase the pain and suffering and take away the momentary joy that we are experiencing. But, throughout human history, people who ‘pause and reflect’ on their behavior or goals have achieved incredible success. Self-reflection has shown to increase academic success in children and adults (2010, 2014).
A successful business conducts daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reviews. In the workplace, even the laziest of managers (Michael from The Office) is supposed to conduct performance reviews and decide the increase in your salary pay.
The Science Behind Self-Reflection
This was supposed to be a straightforward quick story to write but as I am finding out nowadays, nothing is as straightforward as it seems or the self-help experts claim it is to be (read my article on Habit formation).
Why should you care?
The difference between a layperson and a scientist is that ‘Scientist knows what and how!’ whereas a layperson will be throwing darts at the board with a blindfold on expecting to get lucky and hit the target.
Empirical evidence shows that self-reflection that leads to ‘self-insight’ is what drives towards the well-being of individuals.
Self-reflection: the inspection and evaluation of one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior
Insight: the clarity of understanding of one’s thoughts, feelings and behavior
Self-reflection refers to thinking whereas Insight refers to understanding. Attending to feelings is an important aspect of both self-reflection and insight. Research shows that ‘insight’ leads to well-being but self-reflection on its own doesn’t. For self-reflection to lead to well-being on its own needs there are some restrictions — less negative attitude about oneself and more can do and positive attitude (even then the correlation is found to be less).
So positive thoughts and attitude while self-reflection are important.
In the above section, I have implied that self-reflection leads to success but never explained the reasoning. We have just established that Insight leads to well-being and self-reflection leads to insight. In general terms, well-being is associated with success and subjective well-being can be gained from self-reflection.
So, How to Practice Self-Reflection?
1. Journaling
Journaling is an ideal place for self-reflection on a daily basis. Journaling is in and of itself a huge field to delve into. There is a simple method of writing about your daily experiences (Freewriting) to the more complex and illustrative journaling methods of Bullet Journaling. Journaling helps me stay focused on my long term goals and well-being. The months and Years, I journaled were some of the most productive years. I still journal quite regularly even though some gaps did occur due to moving to a new country and college etc.
What should I write in a journal?
- Gratitude: This a must for me from the beginning of my practice. Gratitude is associated with mental well-being and release for various neurotransmitters. Moreover as discussed above, Gratitude or Positive thinking leads to insights more quickly.
- List or Plan: I usually plan my next day before going to bed or simply write the list of tasks that are supposed to be done.
- Review: Daily notes on things happened and a weekly review or a monthly review depending on your comfort level. Reviews help in course correction.
2. Mindfulness
- Meditation: Meditation helps in the development of insight as we are observing thoughts and understanding them as they appear without pre-judging or attaching our own thoughts. Meditation has many other benefits as well and is shown to improve the well-being of people.
- Daily Life: Any free time we get, we try to keep ourselves busy with TV, Youtube, and not let our mind wander. Mindfulness even during minuscule of tasks helps our brain find new insights.
3. Psychotherapy
Professional psychotherapists deal with self-reflection with gentle nudging towards positivity. As stated above self-reflection without a dysfunctional attitude can lead to insights and the insights then lead to well being.
4. Friends and colleagues
Many times there are situations where we tend to be biased about ourselves. We tend to overlook our mistakes and criticize others. This is where our life partners, parents, friends can help us. Collecting feedback from others covers your blind spots which u might overlook. An intellectual person is a better judge than a non-intellectual person.
Analyzing and understanding the feedback and taking necessary actions will save a lot of time and pain down the road.
The Checklist
- Self-insight leads to subjective well-being, personal growth, and mastery.
- Self-reflection alone does not lead to well-being. Self-reflection on the past with negatives tends to have negative effects.
- Concentration on the negative leads to a downward rumination cycle whereas positive leads to an upward spiral effect.
- Rumination inhibits insight.
- Journaling with a positive attitude and Mindfulness helps us in achieving insights. Pause-and-reflect.
Concluding Remarks
Success comes from well-being and well-being can be achieved from self-reflection. Constant evaluation and understanding of our progress help us in being successful or else we are being deliberately blind.
See my other stories at Agastya Zayant
Thanks to the editors — Bharath bandi, CS, and Ammu Bharat Ram
Follow the publication to Step Up— Agastya Zayant
