Reflection as a Catalyst for Personal Change

How to move from hiding out to the light of public exposure

I know many readers have a message or a passion they would like to express to the outside world. But they are held back for a variety of reasons. They ‘hide their light under a bushel’ but feel bad that they are doing so. Instead, they think and write endlessly about what they should do but don’t do it.

If this is your situation, read on. I have a story to tell that identifies the catalysts that might help you identify the trigger and help you fight your way out of the bag of frustrated hopes.

After I finished earning a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, I began a career teaching sociology to undergraduates at a state college in New Jersey. I soon learned that teaching did not suit my temperament. I failed to get tenure and fell out of academia.

Left with nowhere to turn, I turned to an extensive period of introspection. I spent this time trying to locate my most basic psychological needs and the best means for fulfilling those needs.

The Early Years

I concluded that I possessed a deficit in confidence and self-worth. I needed to correct this deficit before facing the world with gainful employment.

I formulated a program that focused on correcting the deficit in self-worth. This program consisted of self-care, skill-building, and volunteer efforts with nonprofit organizations.

My initial efforts were in the self-care area. I stopped smoking, lost a lot of weight, and took up a regime of exercise and clean living (low-carb diet and no alcohol.)

For skill building, I signed up for a writing course to improve my writing skills. I signed on with the Gotham Writers Group in New Yor city and took one of their beginning writer’s seminars.

The Transition

After ten weeks of authoring essays and getting feedback from the instructor and other class members, my skills improved, as did my confidence. At the end of the seminar, the instructor suggested I try writing for various publications, including Medium.

Until then, I had spent less than hours thinking about how to manifest my growing interest in journal keeping, introspection, self-knowledge, finding a passion, and discovering a message for myself.

This process led to convictions about what I needed for my integrity and self-respect. And it also led to some important lessons about self-change, dropping unhealthy habits, and achieving more self-respect and self-worth.

I also wanted to share what I had learned but lacked the means to get the word out. Or I should say I had the means, the ideas, strategies, and tactics, but I lacked the courage to execute them.

Closing the Gap

For too long, I wondered what I should do but fell short of execution. Eventually, I discovered a catalyst that was an entry point to the outer world.

The catalyst was gaining confidence in my writing. I had harbored too many doubts and misgivings that my writing was not good enough. But my confidence increased through the seminar and the feedback from my classmates.

Writing essays about the trials and tribulations of self-change has proved to be an excellent path to finding an audience. The critical factor that made this possible was the perfection of skill and the confidence enabled by that growing competence.

The Power of Reflection

None of this would have happened without the self-reflection focused on my core values and needs. As I discovered, reflection can create personal change when pursued intentionally.

Reflection allows you to try different perspectives for viewing the same issue and uncover possibilities you might have ignored. Personal insights can occur that may be mutative; that is, they can lead to new actions you might not have considered.

The self-knowledge gained by prolonged introspection allows you to become aware of yourself in new ways. And that awareness may empower you to take on new challenges that before seemed beyond your reach.

Conclusion

If you want to close the gap between intention and action, find a catalyst that triggers execution. Self-Reflection may allow you to find that catalyst. Confidence in the tools you need for action is essential. Other rewards of introspection are self-knowledge and discovering new alternatives that connect you to new opportunities and mindsets.

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