The importance of Self-reflection and planning to your personal development journey

​Over the last few weeks, I have been conducting workshops that focus on self-reflection and planning to facilitate personal development for small groups. These workshops are important to me and useful for participants for several reasons, so I wanted to discuss these two activities: self-reflection and planning and explain why they are important to me as a personal development coach and you on your personal development journey. 

​Why does self-reflection matter?
I first got taught about reflective practices and reflection as part of my training to be a teacher in Higher Education (shout out to the CUTL team). We were taught to review our teaching sessions, figure out what worked, what didn’t and use that information and feedback to continually improve as teachers.

I therefore naturally fell into being self-reflective because this practice really helped me as a teacher, so why not use it to better understand myself? I asked myself things like:

• How did some experiences make me feel?
• What did I really enjoy?
• What really made me happy?
• What made me sad?
• What do I do well?
• What strengths or skills can I transfer to new challenges?

Self-reflection helped me to better understand myself. But self-reflection does more than that, it also helps you make informed decisions based on what you know about yourself. It helps you to build resilience because you have thought about and learned from previous challenges and can use that knowledge and those skills to help you overcome future ones.

Why is planning important?
Now, many persons who know me well, know that I AM a planner and absolutely LOVE a to do list. I tend to focus on events, particularly get-togethers with friends that include food and cake. However, planning also plays an important role in your personal development journey and I love that I can take something I am good at to help me grow and be better.

Planning helps to keep you focused on your personal development as your plans should be getting you where you want to be and achieving what you want. Good plans include milestones or several smaller steps or tasks to make it manageable, so meeting any of these milestones helps with keeping you motivated (think about how good you feel when you tick something off your list). Finally, planning helps you to get better at knowing the amount of time and effort you will need for specific tasks.

Why do these two go so well together?
These two activities work wonderfully together! While self-reflection helps you to understand yourself and clarifies where you are now, planning helps you to look to the future and decide how you will get there based on what you already know.
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This synergy is why I put these two together in the Reflections, Priorities & Goals workshop, it allows participants to look back, learn about themselves and learn from their experiences before making decisions about where they want to be in the future. Participants therefore leave the session with a plan for their personal development, goals with greater clarity, purpose and an appreciation of themselves that allows them to commit to what to making their aspirations their reality.