Nine Essential Tips for Mastering Reflective Writing
Photo by Tasha Kostyuk on Unsplash
I like top N lists. They are digestible and approachable and can be really helpful when starting out with a new habit, hobby, or exploring a new domain. But before presenting you with my top N list for reflective writing, a small detour: Why would one want to develop a reflective writing habit in the first place?
There are many benefits, but cherry-picking a few that I believe have helped me the most:
I like to process things; I’m not one to give quick answers, especially when I have not fully formed an opinion on a topic. Reflective writing provides a vehicle for exploring my perspective. Call it, self-discovery.
The process of writing helps me to codify my point of view. By writing, I’ve taken the loose ideas that are floating around in my head and put some structure around them. This helps me later when I am discussing a topic with others to be more coherent and ramble a little less…
Finally—and perhaps most importantly for me—it helps me to clear my mind. I’ve talked about the idea before of starting the day with writing: reflective writing provides an outlet to clear your mind of the unprocessed thoughts and ideas that are consuming you and taking up mental space and making it more difficult to be present.
If you subscribe to the idea of reflective writing’s benefits, without further ado, here’s my list of top 9 tips for developing an effective reflective writing practice:
Start small
Reflecting on a topic does not have to be a long diary or journal entry; it can simply be (for example), “I experienced [this], and felt [that].” You could of course dive deeper into why the experience impacted you in a certain way; but as a very initial step, acknowledging that you were impacted at all is a great start.
Start with an easy topic
Sometimes, when reflecting, we can go to difficult places–and that can be really productive to learn more about ourselves–but if we’re just getting started, and we want to be able to come back tomorrow, start with easier topics to find your footing. For most of us, unpleasant feelings and emotions tend to be more noticeable. When looking for easy topics, a great place to start is with the positive: something that made you smile recently, something that you completed and was accompanied by a sense of accomplishment (no matter how big or small), something that made you feel present (appreciating your surroundings).
Be consistent
Maybe obvious, but as with any habit, consistency is key, especially in the beginning when establishing the habit.
Practice gratitude
If you’re trying to be consistent in your reflective writing practice, but find yourself stuck without a topic to explore, start with simple gratitude, “I am grateful for… [a warm cup of coffee in the morning]”
Create a routine
Hand-in-hand with being consistent, schedule time to practice reflective writing at the same time of the day.
Find your prompts
A prompt helps tie a behavior to an event/activity transition. If you develop rules around prompts to which you tie your reflective writing, it can make being consistent easier to achieve. For example, “after I take off my shoes from my morning walk, I will take a moment to reflect and write down what is taking up my mental space this morning.”
Reflect after practice
When you’re learning or working on something new, in order to continue down a path of deliberate practice, reflection can help you dial into a small area where you would like to create an intention and focus for your next practice. This is a key tenet of Deliberate Practice: when you are coaching yourself, reflection is the feedback loop to guide your focus and effort for improvement, breaking down your practice into very small pieces. By way of example, I have been learning piano as an adult. When I reflect after a practice session, this might look like, “...on measure 18 I noticed that I struggled with a difficult jump in my left hand from one chord to the next…”
Reflect after reading (or listening to a book/podcast, watching a Ted Talk, etc)
In today’s day and age, we’re all consuming so much information. To understand ourselves better, after consuming something [information], pause and reflect. From what you read, what do you agree with? What do you disagree with? What do you not have an opinion of?
Be kind to yourself
Not every reflection will be earth shattering. That’s ok.
You may have noticed, a lot of these tips are generalizable to many areas of life where we want to form new, positive habits, not just reflective writing. Lean into that. I hope you find these tips helpful. And if you want to try out Reflective Rhythm for your reflective writing habit, that’s cool too. Happy reflecting!
