For high-performing professionals, private reflection is an essential tool for accessing the unmediated self, key to healing woundedness as well as activating your true potential.
As high-performing professionals we live in a fast-paced world by desire, and the art of private reflection often goes unnoticed. Yet, it is in these moments of solitude and introspection where profound healing and self-discovery can occur. Far from being a passive activity, private reflection offers a direct, unmediated path to our innermost thoughts and needs, free from the external influences and judgments that can disrupt our inmost selves when dealing with others.
The Depths of Safe Sanctuary
Private reflection allows us to dive deep into our inner world, exploring areas that are not often surfaced in everyday conversations. It's a journey to the core of our beings, where our most authentic selves reside. In this space, you can surface your vulnerabilities, aspirations, and the intricate web of thoughts and emotions that define your unique identity. Doing this, you can begin to understand and clear the limitations and patterning that were placed on you that block you from a life of vitality, achievement, success and sovereignty.
A practice of private reflection creates a sanctuary where your inner voice can express itself clearly, free of external pressures or criticisms, allowing for genuine self-expression. Here, in the privacy of your thoughts, you can engage in an honest dialogue with yourself, examining your life choices, challenges, deepest truths and needs, and the directions your deepest inner self, your most truthful and authentic self, wishes to take.
Performed day over day, it permits you to interact with and give time to the parts of yourself that you often keep hidden, especially those parts that are criticized or "unacceptable" to business peers and life partners. When you can begin to dialogue with these deeper elements within you, you can learn how they contribute to your overall character and life trajectory.
Reflection as Unmediated Access to the Inner Self
Private reflection provides a rare opportunity for direct access to our inner self without ANY filters. It’s a time when you can set down the heavy facades you may have been trained and indoctrinated to present to the outside world, and allow your true self to say what it needs and wants to say. We're so often taught that only our "mediated" elements are "valid" -- only others' approval, only what society says. Set all that aside and get your information DIRECTLY from the source -- your Inner Self, which with its intuitions and thoughts, knows everything it needs to know!
Let your Inner Self speak as it will on what it will. Your inner voice may be a bit salty, forceful, truthful about elements of life you're letting excuses override and go on and on that aren't at all acceptable to your soul layers. Just as often, it will express that which helps heal all those parts of you, back to earliest infancy, that were forced and stuffed into hiding in the face of who you were "supposed" to be to gather approval from the powerful others in your life. As I always note in my work, there is a direct connection between those kid-life parts, and any blockages you are experiencing as a professional today, so it is incredibly growth-supportive and healing to give them a voice after all these years.
Unmediated introspection is essential for personal growth and developing a strong, authentic sense of self. The insights and healing derived from private reflection have a profound impact on your professional life. By understanding and addressing our inner complexities, we open up the journey to understanding the flow of Wisdom in our lives. This self-awareness enhances our interactions and decision-making skills, leading to greater professional success and fulfillment.
Embracing Reflection as a Path to Wholeness
Incorporating private reflection on a daily basis can be as simple as dedicating a few minutes each morning or evening to writing. While your favorite modality may be writing by hand, mine is typing on my laptop, as the results are more easily saveable and searchable over time for keywords and themes of growth. Either way, the key is to make it a consistent, daily practice that refreshes you as your own personal and private time of inner connection.
Allow it to become a natural part of your day, and an ongoing tool for rejuvenation, exploration, and growth. Set out candles, light incense, create a peaceful atmosphere, and surround yourself with enough time to feel spacious with settling into your inmost thoughts.
It helps to keep your writing intensely private. Only then can your Inner Woman or Inner Man say what needs to be said on the page, without filters, as they express deep truths you might otherwise never unearth. Even when writing privately, applying code words or phrases for key people in your life can further help your inner life express itself with proper truth. It adds a layer of assisting your inner structures feel safe to dialogue without fear of repercussion or the "imagined criticism" of others about what you are writing.
Reflection for High-Performing Professionals
Harnessing the power of communicating with your unfiltered, unmediated self is one of the highest levels of direct access to your full potential. In my work with clients, I focus on assisting them to get past what blocks them -- those invisible things that somehow, keep flinging them back when they try to cross that barrier into claiming the success, achievement and authority that their skills have ALREADY demonstrated in work and life. When you begin to dialogue with those parts of yourself that may never have been listened to all your life until now, you can begin to dismantle those barriers and enter into your true power.
Decision-making is one example. Do you seek to be decisive? It's one of the most powerful skills you can wield in a professional setting. If you're not already decisive -- if you constantly hold back, stay quiet, dither or wait endlessly to feel you have "enough" information to make a choice -- WHERE does that come from, and what needs to be changed, healed, or reframed to get you into positive, confident, decisive action? Reflection can surface where that comes from.
Reflection and its insights can also assist you in reclaiming authority, eliminating overwork and overburden, acting from a sovereign place, and freeing yourself into taking on the energies of your true entrepreneurial self, to name just a few. The practice of private reflection is an invaluable tool in the journey towards wholeness and professional excellence. By dedicating time to explore your inner landscape, you open the door to a deeper understanding of yourself and crafting your true place in the world.
Actions & How-To
Morning coffee, if private for you, is a great time for daily reflection. But, any private time where no one can see what you're writing will work.
Make a date header for your entries, since you'll be writing across multiple days. It's helpful to include the day of the week too as this can also surface energies and patterns that tie in to different parts of the week.
Guide your daily reflection with a paragraph of goals, interests, declarations that you re-paste EVERY day at the top of your entries as your reminder. This can help you maintain focus across days of writing.
Express a wish to yourself to work with your Inner Woman or Inner Man, and see what they say to you.
Walk your thoughts out on your pages on any topic of interest, exploration, or healing for you. Let your Inner Woman/Inner Man say anything at all, in any way they wish, even if it seems "forbidden". Those areas that feel taboo or forbidden are often the ones most in need of healing and attention.
Observe the patterns that emerge over time as your inner self opens up to discussing the truth of things you need, want, or need to clear out of your life.
Provide your inner self with the respect of privacy it deserves, and discuss your insights ONLY with trusted others, if at all.
Read back over your past entries from time to time. This is one way to see HOW MUCH growth, healing, and vitality you have created over time with your efforts.
Embrace this path of private reflection, and discover the transformative power it holds in healing, self-discovery, and achieving true professional greatness. It is one of the most supportive acts you can do for yourself as a powerful and sovereign individual, every day.
How will you begin your practice of reflection today as you #healworklife?
Be well,
Katherine
