10 Benefits of Self-Reflection | Experience Plus Scientific Papers

One of the things that really changed my life for the better is actually trying self-reflection. Thus, I am really excited to write this post to share the benefits of self-reflection I’ve found both for myself and others. I have also included scientific papers to solidify the point.

The main benefit of self-reflection is that it allows us to know or be aware of our real selves. This includes not only our goals and dreams but also our weaknesses. This makes sure that we improve and appreciate the right things. Thus, it leads to a more successful and happier life.

In this article, I have made 10 benefits of self-reflection that can give you some motivation to try it. I will explain each of them with my personal experience plus, scientific papers I’ve found that support the benefits. Lastly, I have given a video guide on how I personally do self-reflection in order for you to do it efficiently to make sure you get the benefits as well.

1. Better Interaction With Other People or Environment

One thing I’ve found in developing my self-reflection practice is that I was able to know myself better thus, I was able to communicate better with other people and of course, my environment.

My reason for this is that you can only let people know what you really feel if you really understand yourself.

Sometimes, I see that a lot of people are complaining about people not understanding them. While that might be true, it can also be true that they can’t really explain themselves well.

In order to explain yourself better, you first need to have a deeper understanding of yourself.

Only by understanding yourself would you really be able to communicate what you feel with others.

Thus, I believe that self-reflection is closely related to emotional intelligence.

Furthermore, self-reflection also affects our career life and leadership skills.

A study from the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal found out that leaders who are not self-aware or overestimating their abilities are bad leaders compared to leaders who know themselves really well.^[1]

This means that it is important for you to properly assess yourself. What are your weaknesses, who you really are, or what type of people work best with you?

Only by completely understanding who you are would you be able to become a good team player and a good leader.

“The analysis also suggests that there appears to be a negative relationship between emotional intelligence and leader performance for managers who overestimate their leader abilities.”

Dr. Virginia Bratton, Associate Professor in Montana State University

2. Better Perspective in Life

When I was starting personal reflection, I was able to learn the deep side of me.

What I mean by that is I finally understood what are my goals in life.

By understanding my actual goals in life, I was able to get a new perspective on how should I live my life.

Gone are the days where I wake up and have no idea what to do except to work.

I started working with purpose. I started to incorporate my dreams and goals into what I do.

This gave me a wider perspective on life. Not only am I thinking about living my present, but I am also hoping for my future to be better.

Furthermore, you would also know your deep thoughts upon reflecting.

You will slowly understand how you will respond to certain situations which gets you ready whenever daunting tasks are ahead.

Self-reflection gives us a new perspective in handling difficult situations. Something to look up for.

That’s why I think that self-reflection is one of the keys to happiness.

3. Helps Find Your True Self

The important thing I learned from self-reflection is that I learned about my deeper self.

I started learning more about my goals and dreams. While sometimes it can be easy to say your life goals, most of it could actually come from your environment.

For example, I always thought that I want to be an accountant but the reason for that is both my parents are actually accountants.

Little did I realize that it’s not my goal. It’s just what I see my parents do.

Upon self-reflection, I was able to learn that I want to be a writer. I want to share things on YouTube. Thus, this website and my channel were born.

Now, even if writing content and producing videos is hard and tiring, I was able to continue because I know 100% that I was working for what I really want.

If anything, I am glad that I tool up self-reflection as one of my habits because I was able to have a solid reason to get out of bed each morning.

It also gave me a reason to work on improving my skills which we will talk about later.

4. Being Able To Work for Your Real Goals

When I found out what I really want to do in life, I was able to work on my real goals. The reason is that I was able to start my actual dreams.

The reason is that most of our goals are just affected by our environment and the people around us. And most likely, your real goals are not what your environment tells you.

Thus, it is important to know yourself deeply in order to find your real goals. By finding that, you would be able to work on yourself and your goals.

This gives a solid reason to rise up each morning.

Furthermore, you can improve specific skills that are in line with your goals.

One of the concepts I’ve learned from experience is that our energy is very limited. Thus, what we need in order to succeed is to work on what matters to us.

We all have 24 hours each day, but how we use the 24 hours is where success lies.

“We all have 24 hours each day, but how we use the 24 hours is where success lies.”

Jason Ong

But, I am not alone. I’ve found a research paper discussing the concept of goal setting and self-reflection.

A research study from the British Journal of Educational Psychology found out reflective programs have a strong impact on student’s growth goals which was reflected in their academic performance.^[2]

Students who are in reflective programs were able to have more personal growth and achieved more goals.

The study knows that the goal of the students is their grades or academic performance. Thus, they were able to see an astonishing growth in academic performance with reflective practices.

So, upon looking at this, we were able to prove the importance of self-reflection in goal settings.

So, start asking yourself what are your goals in line with your dreams.

“Academic growth can result from both academically direct and indirect growth goals, and growth goal setting appears to be aided by the process of simultaneous growth reflection.”

Cheryl J Travers, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management

5. Helps Find Out What Needs Improving

Self-reflection helps us find out what needs improving because we would start understanding ourselves deeper.

This means that you would know not just your goals but also your weaknesses.

Most people who are into self-reflection are always looking for areas in their life that need improving. Thus, this is where self-reflection can come into play

By knowing yourself more, you would also understand your weaknesses.

And by understanding your weaknesses, you would be able to start finding ways in order to improve it.

For example, since I want to write, I found out that I am really bad at writing especially grammar. So, I am still improving how I write even after writing almost 200+ articles.

I could’ve studied things that are irrelevant to my goals which would just waste my time and energy, or I can learn the things I need to work on my goals.

As you can see, their difference is like night and day.

Remember that only by achieving mastery would we be able to succeed.

6. Builds Creativity

Our creativity flourishes upon learning self-reflection because we could only be extremely creative if we know our strengths. Self-reflection helps us understand our strengths thus, we would know where we can excel which breeds creativity.

In the last section, we talked about knowing your weakness which is good when it comes to self-reflection.

Of course, we would also understand our strengths by doing self-reflection.

Each of us has different talents and skills that are better than others. Thus, if we use our strengths, we can be more creative,

That’s why I can’t really draw but maybe, you can. You can be creative in drawing and make lots of good art but I can’t.

That’s your strength, and it’s not mine.

That is completely normal and since it’s not actually in line with my goals as of now, I don’t mind.

As you can see in my example, the best artists are the ones who used their talents to the fullest. They were able to excel because they were able to be creative.

Mastery breeds creativity and vice versa because only by mastering things would you be able to create something unique.

That’s the same with if you are creating a lot of unique things then there is a high chance that you’ve mastered a craft.

The link between creativity and reflection is also apparent in a scientific paper titled: “The Reflective Self.”

In that research paper, which was from the Journal of Teaching in Social Work, they’ve found out that creativity and awareness are very much related to others. They have also explained the importance of reflective practices to creativity in students.^[3]

They’ve found a clear link and that proves the point of self-reflection and creativity.

“On-going self-examination, intuitive knowledge and a creative use of self are not only crucial skills in clinical practice in general but should continue to be emphasized in social work practice education.”

Shoshana Ringel, PhD
Associate Professor
University of Maryland School of Social Work

7. Higher Self-Esteem and Self-Respect

I find that the best way for us to start building self-esteem or self-respect is by knowing who we are respecting.

By finding out who we really are, we would be able to start respecting ourselves better.

The reason is that we would have clear reasons why we trust ourselves.

You would start finding and appreciating your strengths leading to self-respect and higher self-esteem.

Plus, you would appreciate yourself much more clearly.

The reason why I said clearly is that sometimes, our source of self-esteem is nonexistent or incorrect which leads to fake confidence.

When our sources of confidence are weak, we can easily lose self-esteem.

This usually happens when you got confidence only from tutorials on body language.

I actually made a guide for you to build true confidence and coincidentally, my first tip is you guess it, self-reflection. Here is the link: How to build confidence and reduce anxiety

Furthermore, when you are more aware of your goals, you would be able to see small victories which would also slowly boost your confidence.

For example, in my case where my goal is to be a writer, finishing this article today would be rewarding and would boost my confidence to write more.

8. Better Work Performance

Since self-reflection teaches you your weaknesses, it would be easier for you to work on them.

This makes us better in our career and work in general.

Furthermore, because of our increase of confidence, we would be able to be more resilient in work.

This builds grit which is very important when it comes to success.

In fact, the relationship between grit and self-reflection has been documented in a research paper.

A study from the Social Behavior and Personality reported that Tennis players that practice self-reflection are more likely to be resilient when it comes to training. Furthermore, they were able to handle stress better.^[4]

For these reasons, self-reflection makes a high impact on our work performance.

9. Be Generally Happier

Practicing self-reflection makes us work with purpose. It also helps us understand ourselves better.

Once we learned that what we are doing is always in line with our goals, it gives us a solid reason to wake up each morning.

When I started doing self-reflection, I always know that I am slowly reaching my goals. Not yet but going there.

Thus, I was able to be excited waking up every day because there are things I would always look forward to.

That’s why I felt happier. Although I believe in hedonic adaptation, I never felt this much happy and lively because I am just grateful that I woke up again with hope.

10. Better in Stress Handling

Because of working on our weaknesses and using our strengths, self-reflection is a big factor in increasing your skills.

This means that this makes you more efficient in work and life in general.

That’s why it improves resilience.

In a research paper titled: Self-Reflection and Self-Insight Predict Resilience and Stress in Competitive Tennis.”, it was found that players who are doing self-reflection were able to handle stress much better.^[4]

Being more resilient means we can handle stress better. Stress is just a part of life and we just need to learn how to cope up with it.

And self-reflection offers us a simple but effective way to cope up with stress by being just better and happier.

Practicing Self-Reflection

This article won’t be complete without giving you a guide on self-reflection.

Where do you start? How to do it effectively? How to do Effective Journaling?

I got you completely covered.

Here is my article showing you how to develop a self-reflection practice. In that article, I shared how you will be efficient in self-reflection which makes you do effective journaling while saving time. Here is the link: How to develop self-reflection practice.

Here is also a video guide on how I personally do journaling for self-reflection. You can find my YouTube Channel here: My Youtube Channel

Sources cited:

1. Bratton, Virginia K., et al. “The Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Accuracy of Self‐awareness and Leadership Performance.” Leadership & Organization Development Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, 2011, pp. 127–49. Crossref, doi:10.1108/01437731111112971.
2. Travers, Cheryl J., et al. “Self-Reflection, Growth Goals, and Academic Outcomes: A Qualitative Study.” British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 85, no. 2, 2014, pp. 224–41. Crossref, doi:10.1111/bjep.12059.
3. Ringel, Shoshana. “The Reflective Self.” Journal of Teaching in Social Work, vol. 23, no. 3–4, 2003, pp. 15–28. Crossref, doi:10.1300/j067v23n03_03.
4. Cowden, Richard Gregory, and Anna Meyer-Weitz. “Self-Reflection and Self-Insight Predict Resilience and Stress in Competitive Tennis.” Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, vol. 44, no. 7, 2016, pp. 1133–49. Crossref, doi:10.2224/sbp.2016.44.7.1133.