Reflection the Key to Self-Awareness

Recently I was asked the following question: If you could only teach one skill, what would that be? My colleagues from Human Resources to Consulting to Executive Coaching responded to this question by supplying specific skills such as active listening, asking good questions just to name a few. Their responses were thorough, eloquent and logical, but not even close as to how I answered the question.
The question was excellent. Individuals were required to reflect before they could respond. Albert Einstein wrote many years ago “Without deep reflection, one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.” Thousands of years before Einstein Confucius stated that “study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous.”
As Einstein indicated, reflection is necessary for individual self-awareness. And yet, how much actual time do we as individuals, small business owners, entrepreneurs, parents or executives actually spend on reflection? The harried pace of today’s world provides a convenient excuse for not taking the time to reflect.
How often do we hear:
* I’m too busy to be bothered with that?
* I have fires to put out?
* I can’t think about yesterday because I need to deal with today?
* Why did I do that because everybody else does that?
When was the last time that you reflected? For me, it was at a recent wake and funeral
of a dear man who wasn’t a relative, but someone whom I had lovingly called Uncle for over 50 years. At the wake, a slide show was presented showing pictures of his life. My family was in many of those photographs and I reflected upon those childhood experiences. This reflection caused me to shed some quiet tears as I reconnected with those almost forgotten memories. I realized how much I had changed and how that change had positively affected me.
So, if you could teach one skill to your child, student, friend, employee or even yourself, what would you teach? For me, there was only one answer – Awareness through Reflection.
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