It's time to reflect a bit, enough time has passed once again. The event which sparked the motivation inside me to write this post was a consultation meeting. The meeting happened today with the consultants being two previous members of our executive board.

During the meeting, we talked about all the different factors that would affect our team chemistry. After going through the topics, I realized that I have changed a lot. Many of the changes are for the better, but there are many changes I am not happy with and would like to change.

Let this post be a personal reminder for me so I don't forget my flaws. Let this be a reminder for you to reflect. Let this be a place where you can let out your thoughts about yourself and how you have changed.

So... how have I changed?

Level up!

Firstly, I have gained many new skills that I didn't have before. Having been to a conference which trains trainers, I feel much more comfortable taking on a training/teaching role. Before going to the conference, I didn't feel ready to pass on knowledge in a clear and concise manner.

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn the skills I was missing with such wonderful people. To add on to that, I am delighted to announce that I will most likely get the chance to give a 15-minute talk on design at a local event in September. I am certainly looking forward to putting all the acquired knowledge and skills to practice!

During that conference I developed my style of preparing a session, perhaps I will write about that in another post in the near future. If you're interested in that, you should certainly let me know by replying to this post.

I got myself a mirror.

A good development is that I have so much more experience doing self-reflection so that it has become much more easy to notice smaller flaws in my behaviour.
I realised this because self-reflection has been a running theme in my life for the past few weeks.

I feel that it is important to point out that self-reflection is not self-criticism. One is about becoming more aware of yourself, the other is putting yourself down. This might seem obvious, but it's an important distinction that I needed to make myself when I first started doing more self-reflection.

However...

The changes I've gone through are not all full of sunshine and rainbows. I have discovered flaws which I feel genuinely feel ashamed of and am doing my absolute best to fix.

Becoming the person I didn't want to become

One of these shameful flaws is, and it pains me to say this, me being cocky. I hate saying this right now. I sincerely hoped that I would never have to say those words since I hoped that I would never become that kind of person. I was wrong.

I believed that I would remain down-to-earth. As it turns out, I did the opposite without even noticing it.

This behaviour has manifested itself in various ways. In ways such as me interrupting people while they are speaking; putting down others' creations in the middle of my emotional actions; not actually listening to people, but waiting for my turn to speak.

When I heard this feedback, my heart started aching. I had developed behaviours I thought I was avoiding. It hit me a like a ton of bricks. Again, I am grateful that I am in an environment which allows me to receive this kind of feedback in a safe environment, so I didn't feel personally attacked.

However, even though I received this feedback in a safe environment, it doesn't take away from the seriousness of what I was told. I would like to think that after noticing it more, I am improving my behaviour, but it will take time to tell.

Losing the ability to control my emotions

Becoming more open emotionally for me was not only a good thing. While I have had wonderful, deep and meaningful conversations with people I never imagined I would ever meet, I... feel like it's becoming a bad influence for me.
I have heard tales from the deepest, darkest corners of people's hearts. I wish I could forget half the tales I've heard because they stay with me. I am glad to be the person who the stories can be told to, but I can't forget any of the emotions that were expressed to me. I just hope that it has helped those who got the chance to share with me.

Another side effect of becoming more emotional has been the loss of control over my feelings. I can no longer just let something slide by me, I usually have a reaction which I would rather not have to express. A perfect example of this is motivational videos. Many of them are built up to be emotional in addition to being inspirational and I shed tears to them more often than I would like to admit.

I can cry tears of happiness, tears of sadness and tears of ... nothing. Sometimes I don't even know why something has affected me enough to become emotional.

I am just grateful to have a support structure which allows me to be so vulnerable and encourages sharing.

Left unsure

I would love to summarize all of this with me saying that my strengths outweigh my flaws, but I am truly not sure anymore. If there is anything you can take out of this, it's that you can become the person you don't want to become and not even notice it happening. Please take the time to do some self-reflection so that you can avoid the surprise I had when I was shown the way to a mirror without a warning.

Please don't become the person you don't want to see yourself as.

Next steps

I won't ask you to follow me or even answer a question by replying. I want to ask you to do only three very simple things.

Firstly, think about the following question: "What if everyone did 5 minutes of self-reflection every month?"

Secondly, I want you to do some self-reflection right now and tell two friends to do the same. Let's bring more self-awareness into the world.