Comments on: 5 Powerful Reasons to Make Reflection a Daily Learning Habit, and How to Do It

By: jtcobb

jtcobb — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:47:07 +0000

Julie – Thanks for pointing out Penzu. I just went to check it out, and it looks very nice. – Jeff

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:54:29 +0000

What a great post! I like to keep a personal journal to reflect on my day. I keep one online at http://penzu.com – a perfect tool for what you are talking about!

Thanks!

By: jtcobb

jtcobb — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:08:25 +0000

Thanks to everyone for the great comments!

Endy – Gretchen is in my (overly large) collection of feeds, but I had not seen that post yet. Thanks for pointing it our. You are right – it is a great complement. And I’m going to have to check out the kaizen book.

Helen – I think that reflection is certainly a path to imbuing all of our experiences with more meaning, and I share your feeling that “less is more.”

Avil – It’s great to hear that you are benefiting from regular reflection. I think “perspective” is such a key part of it. So easy to lose perspective in a hyper-connected, information-overloaded world!

Jeff

By: Avil Beckford

Avil Beckford — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:56:21 +0000

Thanks for the great post. I take time to reflect regularly because it helps me to grow as a person. I journal , meditate and I step back from situations and look at them as an objective bystander and I often get a new perspective.

By: Helen Viksnins

Helen Viksnins — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:26:26 +0000

Jeff, I’ve been realizing lately that life in the association world often has us racing as fast as hamsters on their exercise wheels. My goal is to slow down so that I’m connecting more meaningfully with other staff members (taking time to explain why certain ways of communicating with our members or active volunteers are important, even though they take more time) and connecting in a more personal way with our members (mostly about our annual meeting) rather than just giving a rote answer to each inquiry. Previously, I would have been more proud of being able to answer 300 emails in a single day. Today, I am thrilled to have a meaningful communication with a member or nonmember attendee. I truly believe that imbuing each of these connections, staff and attendee, with more meaning will ultimately result in a richer life for all of us! (This is all following on Jeff DeCagna’s session at ASAE! My take-aways.)

I also believe that taking the time to reflect, breathe deeply, and slow down is key in helping us and the world. A next step might be “news breaks” where you don’t read or watch the news for a specified time!

Thanks for the blog, Jeff! I am taking your words to heart!

By: Endy Daniyanto

Endy Daniyanto — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:46:17 +0000

Hey Jeff,

I think this post goes great when combined with what Gretchen Rubin wrote yesterday about the kaizen way – using small steps of continuous improvement to bring about change (she’s on my RSS dashboard. I’m assuming she’s on yours too since you’ve mentioned her in this post. The link to the post is:
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/09/why-might-small-comfortable-changes-work-better-than-radical-steps-.html).

So connecting your idea with Gretchen’s idea, we can start building self reflection as a habit for one minute a day (for example, just to get started and so not to get overwhelmed). Maybe combine that with the breathing exercises as said by Andrew Weil.

Cheers,
Endy