Reflection - good for the spirit, essential for learning

I wrote this for the LTG internal Mind and Fitness Cafe...and someone suggested I should share it. So here goes:

A word on Reflection itself...

Being ‘busy’ can prevent us from reflecting.?Not helped by the ever-increasing pace of change and the ubiquity of social media crowding out our thought-waves.

Reflection is how we learn.?In fact, I think it is the only way we learn in any profound sense. We now know that you need to go to sleep for learning to embed properly (1 Sleep and the brain)

So, reflection is super important. And in today's world it requires some discipline to make sure we give this some time.

Me...

I am a reflector. In fact, I can barely function “in the moment”. Especially if an answer to a conundrum is required. For really knotty challenges and for thinking profoundly about the future I (personally) need to?rely on my subconscious to go to work.

I believe that?tapping into our subconscious is key to reflection. Although we know that the popular myth that we only use 10% of our brains has been debunked, we know that accessing different parts of our brain ‘on demand’ is difficult to do.

And there is something about our?gut instinct and where your heart will lead you?that I believe in very strongly. You can’t access this (for profound thought) any other way than through reflection. And?reflection requires you to be relaxed and uninterrupted.

So where does this ever happen?!

Well in my case the answer is: 1st the bath and 2nd while travelling. On the ‘bath’ front this explains why my wife comments that I ‘take too many’/’spend so long’ in that particular activity…

What I have learned is that if overnight reflection hasn’t worked (which it sometimes does) it's amazing how many thoughts, ideas, conclusions come while I am in the bath!

Interesting how the pandemic knocked travel time on its head,?which meant I had to find other ways during lockdown.

So,?it's not a matter of lots of time. It's about accessing part of the brain which is otherwise somewhat cut off?- and if you give it the right ingredients (both questions and consciously ask for answers) then the answers can come fast.

More formal reflection - the role of a mentor...

Every year when I had my original business (which I founded and ran for 25 years) I would go into the year with about 5 or 6 objectives of where I wanted to get to. I would sometimes do this personally too but not often.

They were mostly on scrap of paper. Mostly written in haste after quite a lot of thought.

My reflection on what I did was that it was?not very rigorous … but actually quite effective. I always kept the piece of paper, and it was useful to look back and see whether I was getting where I wanted to go.?Anything more complicated and I wouldn’t have looked at it.

Since I started my business,?I have always tried to have a mentor. I strongly advise everyone to have a mentor of some kind (especially if you are leading a business or team). This can be a personal friend, someone in the business or outside the business (mine at LINE was an ex-client, now a lifelong friend).?The important thing is that it's someone who is not you?and probably not part of your family, to whom you have to say out loud what you are trying to achieve.

It's the?saying it out loud that is probably the key point here. To say something out loud coherently you have to have formed your thought properly. In my case stopping the swirling of my often-confused brain and causing focus.

Looking to the Future...

Since then my latest mentor (Aimie Chapple - a Non-Exec of LTG) has got me to be?‘more intentional’?about all of this.

Being more intentional involves an activity that you may think sounds awful. But I find it very effective.

Write down what things will look and feel like?at the end of next year. What will you have?achieved??What will the?shape?of that be? Then?work backwards to see what you need to put in place to make that happen.

I am watching Adam Stedham causing this to happen in GP in relation to landing our new ‘Go to Market’. This involves writing down?quite specific measurements?and then using?Bonnie Beresford’s causal chain?to route back to the actions required now to deliver those results. It's interesting and I am learning a lot.

Back to Reflection...

Whatever method you choose, and however your ‘reflection’ helps you think about anything (including making plans), the one thing?we can guarantee is that things will change.

Which is why your reflection on a rainy Thursday in February having just had a difficult conversation with a client…or colleague…or family member is just as important as your annual plan.?We need to be agile and be able to shift.

Because (for me)?life is all about learning. It's about?the journey. Learning is what makes us human. It's what defines us. And through reflection there are opportunities to learn every - single - day. Isn’t that an exciting thought?

Just need to set aside some reflection time…