I Started Thinking
Our family moved from one side of Tehran to the other when I was a eleven, the age of my son as I write this.
It was a great place to grow up.
Treelined streets, one-story homes built side by side were modest, but comfortable. The gurgle of fountains in large shade filled courtyards, invited neighbors to visit, kids to play.
My friends and I roamed these streets, riding our bikes, playing soccer and sparring with each other. We were pranksters, and as usual, I had to take it further than everyone else.
There was a man who parked his car daily on our street. Noticing how he always left his keys under the gas tank cover, one day, I took them, got in the car and drove it a couple of blocks away.
Then I carefully replaced the keys and went home.
That evening the man returned to find his car missing. He went into a panic, thinking it had been stolen. I’m sorry to report my delight as I watched him trying to come to terms with the situation.
It wasn’t about the stress he was having. It was about the fun I was having.
When we finally told him where he could find his car, he didn’t find it humorous at all.
At that moment in time, I wasn’t concerned at all about how my actions affected other people. I wasn’t worried about tomorrow, or any long-term consequences. In fact, ‘Long-term’ wasn’t even in my vocabulary. I was self-centered and living in the moment.
Something began to happen with that simple prank. Something changed as I watched how my simple mischievous act impacted that man.
I started thinking about what I was doing and why.
There was no explanation, but every night it would take me a half hour or longer to fall asleep. I would lay in bed going over what I had done during the day.
Many teenagers become self-conscious as they begin to enter adulthood. They start to worry about how others see them and where they fit in the scheme of things. But strangely, that’s not what was happening to me.
I was definitely aware of my body through my senses and my physicality, and how I fit in socially.
So, I would lay there, thinking about my day.
What was good about it? What was bad?
What kind of effect did I have on my schoolmates, neighbors, friends and family?
If my words and actions were like stones dropped in a pond, then what were the ripples they caused?
I learned more about my own operating system by asking straightforward questions about myself, to myself, figuring out my strengths, which gave me confidence, as well as my weaknesses, which proved to be the most valuable information. As an engineer wants to know the weaknesses of the machine, so it can be upgraded. I think my scientific mind understood this, even if I wasn’t conscious of it at the time.
Perhaps this habit of self-reflection developed empathy in me as well.
To see things from the perspective of others is a skill that can be developed and then exercised regularly.
I’m sure I inherited this from my father. It seemed to sprout unbidden and started taking root.
It was surprising to discover not everyone practiced self-reflection. We have lived in an action-oriented culture where the pace and pressures of daily life, the demands of work and family and the onrushing pace of a global, high-tech world are pressing and real. These pressures made it seem like we didn’t have time to sit and think, we raced from one thing to the next.
Each of us is an amazingly complex individual with a unique combination of personality traits, likes, dislikes, attitudes and emotional responses.
We see the world through our own lens and react in what are often predictable patterns, much like the algorithm written into a computer chip.
When you input data into a chip, the algorithm determines the output. In the same way, your personality, with all its facets, is going to determine how you respond to the ‘data’ coming at you from the world. Most of the time our algorithm is working sub-consciously. We’re not even aware of the process. We just react according to our built-in programming, which feels natural to us because it’s familiar.
But unlike computer chips we are self-aware. We can change our own algorithms and change the way we interact with the world. We can get better at it. And the first step is to understand our current algorithm. This is why we should try to understand ourselves as thoroughly as we can.
I believe regular, daily self-reflection – or meditation, prayer, or whatever your spiritual practice, all of which involve self-reflection – is the key to success in every aspect of your life.
Without it, you can never understand why you do the things you do and therefore, you can never consider alternate responses.
Without self-reflection there can be no real growth.
It’s hard for all of us to admit that our knee jerk responses to situations might not be productive.
But accepting that, like everyone else in the world, you are imperfect and there are flaws in your approach to life, is an extremely liberating experience. It frees you to change and get better.
The world never stops changing. Every day we meet new people, encounter new obstacles and also find great new opportunities. As the world around us changes, we must change, too. But how can we make sure we are changing in ways that will be positive and helpful?
We tend to think about these things once a year, usually as we make New Year’s resolutions. Personally, it’s hard to imagine a worse way of trying to change your life. Focusing on dramatic, sweeping changes that have to begin tomorrow almost always guarantees failure.
A preferable option, at least in my book, begins by simply finding five minutes at the end of every day to think about where you are, where you’re going and the impact you’re having on the world around you.
Try to identify specific moments or actions that didn’t go as you wish they had. Then try to understand what happened. Ask yourself:
What was my intention?
Did I communicate it well?
What effect did my action or words have on the people around me?
What did the people around me feel or think?
What would I do differently if I could do it over? What can I do tomorrow to fix the problem?
Often you will find that with just a little mental effort, you can actually get a ‘do-over,’ a chance to fix whatever went wrong.
You might find as you go over the events of the day, the same patterns keep emerging. This is a way to learn about your operating system. You might find you have habits that lead you to self-sabotage or ways of dealing with people that are counterproductive.
There may be one particular time of the day when you’re not at your best, or one person who brings out the worst in you. OR. You might find that you always feel at your best after exercise or spending time with a certain person. You might discover you have a talent for negotiations, or for encouraging your co-workers, or for problem solving. Often, we have only vague ideas of our strengths, let alone our weaknesses.
Plus, if you are already aware of most of your character weaknesses, you can’t be too insulted if someone points them out. You’ve got an advantage because you already know what they are telling you.
You’re aware that you can be judgmental, for instance. If someone suggests you are being judgmental, do an instant inventory. It becomes a simple matter to realize either you are guilty and change course, or your statement came from a place of observation. You completely avoid the blame/guilt/shame trap and there is no motivation to deny and defend yourself.
Daily self-reflection helps you correct your mistakes before they lead to bigger problems.
Here’s an example: You consider yourself to be a friendly, easy-to-work-with person. Yet every day, you start work a little irritated due to a difficult commute, no coffee, or coffee, but served with an encounter with someone who gets under your skin. You’re friendly, but the day starts in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
Simply reviewing your day on a regular basis will help you spot the cause of the trouble and do something about it before your irritability damages a relationship and gives you a bad reputation.
You might not be able to change your behavior immediately, but you will understand yourself better. A few minutes every evening, going over the good and bad that happened during the day, will help you break patterns. This may sound elementary, but you will be surprised how the simplest changes can add up to big difference in your life.
Looking back, I am grateful for stumbling onto this life-changing habit. It’s not actually a painful task, more like an exciting adventure into your own psyche, discovering what makes you tick both good and bad, and how it’s possible to improve upon who you are.
This simple tool of self-reflection, practiced daily, can do more to change your attitudes, circumstances, and relationships than anything else.
The Autopilot Approach
At Life Time we count our memberships every hour in every location. We know how many people have joined and how many people have let their accounts lapse. We know which clubs have had an increase in traffic and which ones have seen a decrease. As I write this, Life Time has millions of members in 150 locations across the country, but we still make sure we know what’s happening at each of our clubs every single day.
Successful businesses do this because their leaders understand that daily self-evaluation is the only way to make the corrections we need before our mistakes overwhelm us.
It’s the same principle you use when piloting a plane.
When you look up and see a plane cruising across the sky, it seems as though its course is straight and unchanging. But that’s not really the case. A plane is not running along tracks but flying through a sea of air full of wind and gusts which cause countless tiny variations in the position of the plane. In fact, the real breakthrough for the Wright brothers came when they realized that a plane would need constant adjustments to stay level and flying in the right direction.
When you program a destination into the autopilot on a plane, you’re not plotting a path, but an endpoint. As you fly along, the autopilot makes hundreds of tiny changes in direction, every minute, to keep the plane heading for that endpoint. These changes are so small and happen so quickly that a passenger on the plane, or an observer on the ground won’t even notice them. It looks like the plane is flying smooth and level with no change at all.
What happens if the autopilot doesn’t make these constant small corrections? Pretty soon you’ve veered way off course, or even worse, entered into a dangerous situation where drastic measures are needed to avoid a fatal crash.
What’s true for the plane is true for our lives.
Life never goes forward in a smooth, straight line.
There are always small adjustments needed to stay headed in the direction we want. With daily self-reflection, you can make them so quickly that to an outsider it might seem like you’re not changing course at all.
Changing direction isn’t easy. Changing your basic approach to things is even harder. However, if you make self-reflection a daily habit, you will be able to change, one little step at a time.
