Reflecting on reflecting

Awareness: Journaling to connect with myself

I’ve started journaling. There are various models of reflection and I’m trying to find the one that most suits the way I’d like to reflect and write. I have a journal that I carry everywhere. In this notebook I record daily thoughts, observations about the world and my role in it. I record thought provoking quotes and ideas that I hear.

I also have a one sentence journal. It’s a leather bound five year journal that’s designed to keep a record of my life. The idea is to write one sentence per day about anything. I use it to record how I felt on especially meaningful days. I express gratitude and I record memories. Each page has five sections of the same date for five different years which means that over time, you get to see and reflect upon your thoughts from the year before. I don’t write in it every day. I get busy being busy but I don’t beat myself up about it.

The third journal I have is a mindfulness journal which has prompts to trigger thoughts around gratitude, life goals, sleep, movement, breathing and eating. I guess the idea of this journal is to offer myself a kind of therapy by encouraging me to reflect on what’s good in my life. Otherwise, it an be all too easy to ruminate on the bad.

My everyday journal, my 5 year journal and my mindfulness journal

The act of reflection is useful to consolidate experiences into learning and to reflect on my behavioural responses. Consider, how often do we respond to situations with near automated behaviour? As in, something happens and then “click, whirr”, some unconscious process is set off in our brains and in our bodies. Sometimes this is good. If somebody smiles at me, I feel good and I smile back. But sometimes our automatic responses don’t serve us. When I’m presented with a challenge, my first thoughts can sometimes be about how I won’t be able to rise to the challenge. I feel threatened. This manifests in hesitation at best or hostility to the idea at worst. If I were to track my vital signs I suspect that in these moments my pulse speeds up, my breathing becomes shallow and my temperature rises. The act of journaling is like shining a torch of awareness on what behaviour makes up my life. It allows me to witness my habits and question whether there are moments when I need to reconfigure my automated responses.

Belief: Journaling to change myself

“What one can be, one must be”. — Abraham Maslow

Once I start to observe my behaviour, then I can start to observe whether I am living up to being the best version of myself. That is, who I am capable of being and who I’m actually being. It occurs to me that it is in the gap between my best self and my actual self that regret, anxiety and disillusionment can come into being.

My actual self ;)

My flourishing self ;)

Likewise, the moments in life when we are fully connected with ourselves and with others are also the moments when we experience the most joy and we flourish. In The Nicomachean Ethics, the word Aristotle used to capture the best version of oneself was eudaimonia. Jonathan Barnes, the author of the introduction to the Penguin Classic version of The Nicomachean Ethics writes that “the eudaimōn is someone who makes a success of his life and actions, who realizes his aims and ambitions as a man, who fulfills himself”. In other words, the ultimate aim of life is not “happiness”, but more of a sense of actualisation which aligns with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs-1.png

The first step in changing ourselves is awareness. The act of reflection via journaling allows me to identify the gap between my current self and my best self. It allows me to observe bad habits and make plans for instilling newer and healthier habits. In the book, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, cognitive scientist Tom Christian and author Brian Griffiths write about human algorithm design. This is the process of identifying the algorithms, or habits that currently rule our behaviour and then “install” new habits or algorithms to live a more fulfilling life. They call them “if-then implementation intentions”. They write about using willpower wisely to “install” new habits that run on autopilot. Here are some algorithms that I’ve been reflecting upon recently:

Existing algorithms that don’t work

• If I am presented with a challenging project, then I think of ways I’m going to find it difficult (rather than as an opportunity to stretch my ability. I think of why something is not possible before I think what’s possible.
• If I wake up in the morning and I am tired, then I stay in bed until the last possible minute. Then I am behind for the rest of the day.
• If it takes me a while to get something done, then I tell myself that I’m lazy, that I’m a slow learner and that I’m not that good.
• When I start to feel fatigued in work or on a project, then instead of taking a proper break, I start looking up rubbish on the internet. This drains my energy and makes me even more fatigued.
• If I don’t go to bed on time, then I’m tired the next day.
• If I need to have a difficult conversation or send a difficult email, then I procrastinate and avoid it for days. Then the situation escalates.
• If I don’t prepare a food plan, then I might end up treating myself to something less than nutritious.
• If I don’t exercise for a few days, then I get irritable and I can feel a build up of negative energy.
• If I don’t get good momentum in the morning, then by the afternoon I feel like the day has been a waste.
• If I do something good, then I rarely celebrate it.
• If I do something silly, then I berate myself.
• If I think of somebody that I haven’t seen in a while, I’ll send them a message there and then.

Existing algorithms that are good

• If I’m hanging out with my nieces and nephews, then I am fully present.
• If I’m in a learning situation, then I take lots of notes.
• If I’m going on a long journey, then I try to use my travel time wisely by listening to an audiobook or podcast.
• If I visit my Dad, then I’ll go out with him for a pint.
• If I go to a fitness class, then I work really hard and sweat a lot!
• If I commit to getting something done, I’ll work all night to complete it if I have to.
• If I have a big weekend of eating and drinking unhealthily, then I’ll watch what I eat and make sure I do some exercise to work it off.
• If I’m reading a book, then I’ll try to highlight passages and make notes so that I can review it again in the future.
• If something memorable happens in my life, then I’ll try and write about it in my journal to capture both the memory and the feelings of the event.

Aspirational algorithms: The algorithms I’m trying to install

• Get better at structuring my days, not to limit creativity but rather, to create time for creativity.
• Prepare breakfast and lunch before bed.
• Schedule breakfast and lunch.
• Plan work days and work time.
• Kiss the frog: Do the hard things that I need to do early in the day.
• If I start to feel demotivated during the day, then I should take a break and walk for a few minutes. Have a little dance and replan my day. Don’t look at the news, or Twitter. These things spend my attention and energy.
• When I do some good work, then I should take a moment to celebrate it.
• If it hits 1730, then I start to wrap up my work. That means celebrating my achievements for the day and making a note of what I need to do the next day. I’d like to create a ritual whereby I close my machine and then switch to being present with my wife, friends and family.
• If I go to bed, then I remove my earphones and reflect on my day and how my body feels.
• If I meet a new person, then I smile and ask them about themselves.
• If I do something silly, I won’t berate myself. It is my judgement of a situation that causes me problems, not the situation itself.

There is a lot more for me to reflect upon. I’m sure I’ll observe other bad habits as I proceed but at least I am becoming aware of them. Through my journaling practice, I want to observe what’s working for me in terms of energy, work, study and love. Also, what’s draining me in terms of energy, work, study and love?

Commitment: to change

In How We Think, John Dewey makes a distinction between thinking and reflection. He describes thinking as follows:

“Everything that comes to mind, that “goes through our heads” is called thought”. To think of a thing is just to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever”. — John Dewey, How We Think

He distinguishes reflective thought as follows:

“Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence — a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors…The successive portions of the reflective thought grow out of one another and support one another; they do not come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to something — technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow becomes a train, chain, or thread.” — John Dewey, How We Think

In this sense, the act of reflection is generative. It has outcomes. It helps us to update our understanding of ourselves and the world. The act of reflection is not just about looking backwards. It should be about making committing to change and pursuing that idea of eudaimonia.

A personal model for reflection: ABC

It occurs to me that if reflection is associated embracing life long learning then it’s important to cultivate a practice that supports clarity of thought, is personally meaningful and which helps me to update my understanding of myself and the world. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking about how I approach it. I’m not sure if this is entirely original but I’ve come up with my own model for reflection. I have an acronym for it. ABC which stands for Awareness, Believe and Commitment to change.

• Awareness: The act of reflecting is like shining a torch of awareness on what behaviour makes up my life. It allows me to witness my knowledge and behaviour and question whether there are moments when I need to update my understanding of my world.
• Belief: Once I become aware then I need to address the gap between my current knowledge and behaviour and the ideal behaviour. Before I commit to change, I need to believe that I can change.
• Commitment to change: The act of reflection is not just about looking backwards. It’s about looking forward and constantly reconstructing my identity, knowledge and behaviour.

True happiness, in the Aristotelian sense, should be the pursuit of self-actualisation. Maybe that’s the ultimate purpose of life.