5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Habit, and How to Do It

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It’s New Year’s Eve (where I live), and I’ve been doing a lot of reflection over the last year. It’s the perfect time of year to look back and reflect on what you’ve done right this year, to learn from what you’ve done.

And on further reflection, this habit of reflection is something that I’ve developed pretty strongly this year.

It’s actually one of the secrets to my success.

At least once a day, and more often several times a day, I reflect on my day, on my life, on what I’ve been doing right, and what isn’t working. I reflect on every aspect of my life, and from this habit of reflection, I am able to continuously improve.

Reflection is what gave me the topic of this post, and the tips that are to follow. Reflection is what gives me the content of every post I write here on Zen Habits.

I highly recommend that, if you haven’t yet, you develop the daily habit of reflection, in your own way. It could have profound changes on your life.

Here are but a few:

1. It helps you learn from your mistakes. If we don’t reflect on our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. And that’s not very smart. However, if we reflect on those mistakes, figure out what went wrong, see how we can prevent them in the future, we can use our mistakes to get better. Mistakes, then, are a valuable learning tool, instead of something to feel embarrassed or upset about. Reflection is an important way to do that.

2. It gives you great ideas. Like I said, every single post idea that I have for Zen Habits (or other blogs I write for) comes from reflection. Basically, I reflect on things that I’m doing or that are going on in my life. If things aren’t going well, I learn stuff I can share with others. If I reflect on something that’s a success for me, I think about how I got that success, and share that too. I’ve had hundreds of great ideas this year from reflection.

3. It helps you help others. The ideas I get for posts are not just things I feel like writing about … they’re ways that I can share what I’ve learned to help others going through the same things. And this year, I’ve learned just how powerful that is. I began the year with the hope that some of the things I’ve learned in the past couple years can help others … and I’m ending the year with the profound realization of how such simple little tips can change people’s lives. I’ve had hundreds of emails from readers who tell me how little tips, like how to wake up early, or how to start the exercise habit, have changed their lives. That’s incredible. I’m overjoyed if I help people or inspire them.

4. It makes you happier. If you reflect on the things you did right, on your successes, that allows you to celebrate every little success. It allows you to realize how much you’ve done right, the good things you’ve done in your life. Without reflection, it’s too easy to forget these things, and focus instead on our failures.

5. It gives you perspective. Often we are caught up in the troubles or busy-ness of our daily lives. A mistake or a high-pressure project or something like that can seem like it means all the world. It can overwhelm us sometimes. But if we take a minute to step back, and reflect on these problems, and how in the grand scheme of things they don’t mean all that much, it can calm us down and lower our stress levels. We gain perspective, and that’s a good thing.

How to Make Reflection a Daily Habit
If reflection isn’t something you feel you do enough, consider making it a habit. Here are some suggestions for doing that:

1. Start a one-sentence journal. I picked up this trick from my friend Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project … basically, it’s the easy way to start the journaling habit. If you’ve tried and failed at journaling in the past, try the one-sentence journal. It’s a habit that you’ll love, especially when you look back on a year’s worth of entries.

2. Focus on doing it at the same time, every day. No exceptions. Even if you don’t start a one-sentence journal, get into the reflection habit by taking just a few minutes at the end of every day to reflect on your day. Journaling helps crystalize those reflections. Either way, whether you write it down or not, make reflection a daily habit. Write down your goal: what you’ll do, when you’ll do it, and where. Then focus on doing it every single day, same time, same place, no exceptions whatsoever. If you have a trigger (such as, “right after I brush my teeth”), this will help establish the habit. Otherwise, sign up for an online service that sends you a daily reminder at the same time each day.

3. Exercise. One of my favorite times to reflect (other than at the end of the day or while driving) is during one of my runs. I like to take that time to think about my life, and my work. Some of my best post ideas come during runs. If you don’t run or have some other form of daily exercise, consider just taking a walk and using that time for reflection. Make a daily appointment and don’t miss it!

4. Think about your day, your work, your life. In that order. I like to take a look back on my day, to think about what I did right and wrong, what could be improved. Then I take a look at my work, to see how things are going there. Then I step even further back and take a look at my life as a whole. It’s a three-step system that leads to a lot of improvement over time.

5. Write about it publicly. If you post your reflections on a blog, or a forum you belong to, or just on a LiveJournal account viewable to friends … you’re holding yourself accountable to a group of people. Your reflections are shared with others, and once people start to read them and expect them, you’ll feel that positive public pressure to keep it up. That’s what has happened with this blog, and it’s been a great thing for me.

5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Habit, and How to Do It was originally posted on Zen Habits on 12/30/07.

Why You Should Celebrate Your Mistakes

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When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.

Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.

And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes — at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.

Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow.

If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible, they make growth and improvement possible.

By trial and error — trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes — we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.

Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.

Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away.

Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing usually … then you construct a model in your mind … then you test it out by trying it in the real world … then you make mistakes … then you revise the model based on the results of your real-world experimentation … and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something.

That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Trial and error, learning something new from each error.

Mistakes are how we learn to do something new — because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success — at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.

So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.

Celebrate your mistakes. Cherish them. Smile.

Why You Should Celebrate Your Mistakes was originally posted on Zen Habits on 1/26/09.

How to Be Childlike

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“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

Sometimes I lounge lazily in bed, in the middle of the day, with a couple of my kids and just abandon my worldly concerns, and just play.

Or I’ll sit and just watch them play, pretending they’re superheros or princesses or playing house or shooting each other with stick guns.

It never fails to leave me with a sense of wonder, of pure joy, of a return to innocence and a simpler time.

As grown ups, we’ve lost this childlike sense of life. And that’s actually a sad thing.

It’s not just about happiness and innocence either — being more childlike also helps us to be more creative, more imaginative, more innovative and open to worlds of possibilities.

Consider: as children, we are naturally imaginative, curious, able to play without a worry in our minds. Some qualities of young children that happen naturally:

  • they live in the present
  • they have no concerns about money, productivity, or being cool
  • there are no limits to their imagination, except what they’ve been exposed to
  • they play and lose themselves in play
  • they create with abandon
  • they are endlessly curious, and ask questions … without end
  • they love showing off to their parents

We could learn a lot from children. Sure, they have qualities we might not want, but in my eyes, they are already perfect. We don’t need to mold them into people, we need to be more like them.

We lose this childlike nature, the nature we’re born with, because of society — it has certain institutions and systems in place that beat childishness out of us, so we can be more productive citizens and consumers. I think it’s unfortunate.

We shouldn’t abandon all responsibilities, but we can learn a lot from children and be more like them in some ways.

How to be childlike
We must first acknowledge that no change is instantaneous, that any change worth keeping takes time. But you can start today.

Start by deciding to abandon caution and to give this a try. Start by identifying the qualities of children you’d like to emulate: curiosity, play, living in the moment, abandoning worries, imagination, creativity, pure joy.

Observe children. Watch how they play, how they live, how they create, how they ask questions. Sure, sometimes they do dumb things like throw tantrums, but even in that you can see their pure abandonment of everything but what is happening to them right now. Watch and learn.

Play with children. If you have some of your own, great. If not, play with children of friends and family. Lose yourself in the play. Be a dinosaur, or a gorilla, or a villain. Have a joyous time. Make them squeal in delight, and feel free to do the same yourself.

Talk with children. Ask them questions. Answer theirs. Don’t talk down to them with baby talk, but don’t be too grownup either.

Play by yourself. Go outside and run around, jump, slide, kick a ball around, pretend. Forget about who might be watching.

Create like a child. Don’t be constrained with what people expect, what you’re used to. Be wild and have fun. Imagine that things can be different, that there are no limitations, and see what happens. Most of your childlike drawings will be tossed in the trash, but some might be put up on the fridge.

Be curious like a child. Look at things with a child’s eye, and ask questions you’ve never asked before, explore with a beginner’s mind. Don’t be afraid to ask why, and what if, and why not?

Live in the moment. Forget about all you have to do. Forget about what happened yesterday, or that conversation you had. Forget about that meeting that’s coming up, or those deadlines. Just do, and be.

See the world with new eyes. It is a wondrous place, a miracle happening every second, a source of immense fascination that can knock you on your ass if you let it. You are a miracle, and every moment you have is a gift. What will you do with that gift?

And last, if you have children, let them be childlike. Stop trying to make them grow up. Stop trying to shape them, criticize them, make them your own piece of clay, as Marvin Gaye said. Let them be, and enjoy the beautiful way they already are.

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” – Paula Poundstone

How to Be Childlike was originally posted on Zen Habits on 9/16/09.