I feel like when we are in a rut or having a tough time, we tend to focus on where we are at. What is going on with ourselves. Why are we in this rut. What has caused this tough time. In fact, I feel like this is something that we do a lot in general. There is A LOT of self reflection going on in our world these days. Reflecting on who we are, how we’ve gotten where we are at, what we want to do, the list goes on and on.
While I am not opposed to a little self reflection and spending time sorting ourselves and our feelings out, I feel like I am starting to see a bit of a problem. The problem where we spend to much time reflecting and not enough (or really any) time DOING. A lot of times we will sit in our thoughts and feelings and try to work through all of our problems and we forget that to work through our problems we have to…well WORK THROUGH our problems.
Thinking can only get us so far. Doing is the next step. And sometimes, sometimes we over think when we should just jump.
Now, I don’t mean let’s just throw rational thought and decision making out the window. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t think things through at all and I’m not saying that we should never reflect on who we are, what we are doing and how we are living.
What I am saying is that there is a time and place. There is a moment that we should reflect, but there is also a moment where we need to stop.
If we are constantly searching for who we are, constantly looking within ourselves that does not leave anything left to experience. It does not leave space for us to explore and truly find ourselves in other situations, in other instances, in other people. There is a whole world out there and we need to go experience it. For we do not truly know who we are until we have lived our lives.
I do not mean to get all personal development-y/serious/meditative here, but this is something that I am seeing more and more of and it is aggravating.
We don’t all need to always be trying to find ourselves. I’m not saying that growth and change do not occur, we are ALWAYS growing and changing (you can see my many blog posts on this), but 90% of this time that growth comes from new experiences, new situations, new people. Only about 10% of our personal growth comes from self reflection. (These are not scientific numbers or study results or anything like that, just my own opinion)
All this to say, that self reflection is good and is something that we all should do from time to time, but it is not something that needs to be taking over our lives. Self Reflection should not be stopping you from living life to the fullest. Make sure that you are not constantly looking inward and trying to find yourself. Sometimes we can only find ourselves by living life.
A Cuppa Cosy 