When powerful things happen in our lives, we may have trouble processing them immediately. We often turn to journaling or other inner work to sort out how we fall and how to respond. It can be especially challenging when something is ongoing, or so big that we can't take it all in at once.
I feel like we are at a place in time where there is just too much going on. Some things are lingering, while other things are popping up and just adding to the whole situation. We have both internal and external factors we have to consider. And even if we sit down and spend some time to work through what's going on, in a short while more things will add in and it feels like we just can't get a grasp again.
Inner work isn't always a one and one. Sometimes, we need to come back to something and work on it over and over. This isn't a bad thing! Just because you have worked on something in the past doesn't mean it will stop effecting you. Revisiting your reflections gives you a little space, some distance between you and the issue you are reflecting on. And sometimes you have to let those thoughts and reactions sit, in order to really understand what's going on.
I often find that, when something is really big, I have to get my emotions out of the way before I can even think about actually thinking about the issue itself. If I journal things out in the moment, I'll get those emotions out on the page. Putting them on the page makes me feel like I have expressed myself, which allows me to let go of them....at least a little bit. But it doesn't mean that I have actually peeked at the things behind those emotions.
When I go back, I can read what I wrote and actually start thinking about what it means and why I wrote it. I start to peel back the layers, and see what's underneath. But this is often a process, a cycle of reflecting to old reflections, letting them sit, and then coming back and doing it all over again.
But like the wheel of the year, the cycle of reflection is not a circle, it's a spiral. You keep coming back around, but each time you are building on what you did before, so you are at a new beginning. You have those previous cycles to look back on, to draw insight and meaning from.
And here's where it gets really interesting. A lot of times, we can't see certain things until we recognize the patterns that are going on. We have to see things come up time and time again so we can start to link them together and notice what the common threads are. An incident on it's own may not mean anything, but when we notice we have the same reaction to three or four different circumstances, we can start to see what is the same...and what is different. Perhaps we were able to handle the situation better once time than the others. When we go back and look at all the cycles, we can see what was different about that one time.
With ongoing situations, we also start to see the effects of longevity. Something that might be exciting when it happens once, starts to become repetitive after a month, and something we come to dread after six months. And we may catch ourselves thinking back and wondering when things changed. Even if we didn't delve into how things were effecting us along the way, it is never to late to look back and start unraveling how our relationship with events has changed.
Now, more than ever, I think it's important to regularly take time to stop and reflect on how different areas of our lives are doing. It is really easy for things to slide into dark places, often without us really being aware of how they have shifted. But if we stop, check in, and really take the time to evaluate how our life is, we can correct issues before they become too big and need to be broken down.
This is one thing that I have learned from working with goal-oriented planners. They often have pages for reflection at the end of the month or quarter. The nice thing about these pages is that they have specific questions for you to answer, so it's not just a blank page staring at you. Of course, there are many different reflection prompts you can find online (or you can create your own!) that help you tune into different aspects of your life and see how you are doing.
Finding the right frequency for regular reflection is another thing to consider. I've found that weekly is almost too frequent for me. Monthly feels like a good amount of time, as quarterly is a bit long. In the coming year, as I am going back to a personal bullet journal inspired system, I may go with Sabbat reflections, or I may tie them into the moon cycle (or I may do both, using the moon cycle for my daily life and the Sabbat cycle for the big spiritual growth reflections).
But no matter how often works for you, or what style of check-in you do, cyclical reflections can help us gain the needed perspective to start to see the patterns and catch problems before they become huge issues. We can learn our own warning signs, and start to find ways to self-correct before we are drowning. And we can better understand our place in the world around us, no matter what is going on.
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