Your reflection

Hi, and welcome back to reflecting as part of the TRUE Leaders Programme. This video is part three of reflecting. So far, we have looked at what reflecting is, and we have looked at a model of reflection. Today, we are thinking about what are the optimum conditions for you to reflect, and what I mean by that is what helps you reflect? What situations are most beneficial for you? And what preferences do you have?

Today is a prompt for you to try different things as well as remembering our comfort zone and remembering our stretch zone. What I would like you to get from today is to maybe try some different ways. So we may believe that we have certain preferences, but sometimes it is good to test those by trying something different.

So the way that I am thinking about this is about you understanding what helps you reflect, and we will all be different again. There is no right or wrong way to do this. And also, you may have different ways of reflecting for different things. So there may be some things that you prefer to journal and write down. Other things you may prefer to talk to someone about it, or you may prefer to record yourself talking about it, or a video of yourself, or you may like to think about it, but not record anything down.

You may have certain times of day that you like to reflect or certain times of the week or the month or of the year or whatever that is. They may be certain places that you like to go to reflect. You may prefer to be quiet. You may prefer to be in the social space. You may prefer to be with other people. You may prefer to be on your own. So I would like you to start thinking about the best conditions for you to help you reflect deeply.

Now be open-minded about this; one of mine is in the shower. Because in the shower, for some reason, I often do really good thinking. I think it might be something to do with the fact that I have not got many distractions and I do not need to put a lot of thought into what I am doing, but I have five to ten minutes of time that cannot really do anything else with other than just shower. Sometimes I just sing, and hopefully, my neighbours do not hear me, but I will often have moments where I reflect or think or plan or create, and it is just a great space for me. I love being in and around water as well. So I do not know if that is linked to that, and I often enjoy going to look at water, whether that be a canal or a lake, or I love waterfalls. It could be a waterfall.
But that for me is something that is important.

Other times I actually really like to go to a social space but be on my own, so I will like to go and at the end of each month. I have an end of month reflection points, and I tend to go to a local cafe or something like that to do that, and I like the fact that I am in my own space, but there are noise and people around me. For that kind of thing, I do not want it to be completely quiet. I do not want it to just me, but I do want to be on my own. I do not want to be in conversation necessarily. So that is an example of some of the different ways that I like to reflect. But what works for you? How do you find it works best? And you may not yet have had the luxury of trying different things. If that is the case, do not worry. Use this as an opportunity to try a few different things, different places, different times, and different ways of doing it whatever works for you.

So that is what this task is about. This is about reflecting for you and what works best. This is when you can play around with, and again, you might want to talk to other people, or they will be coming on to reflecting and helping others with reflecting tomorrow. But you may want to talk to other people about what works for them to see if there are some ideas that you can try. So give it a go and spend a little bit of time practicing testing out different things or thinking about what is worth for you in the past and recognising that.

So that is what we are doing in part three of reflecting in the TRUE Leaders Programme. Enjoy playing around with this one. I am really excited to see what you learn from it and looking forward to hearing some of your ideas or some of the things that work for you. So I will see you again in the next part where we start to think about how we support others or how we reflect with others as well. So enjoy this one, and I will see you soon. Take care.