Looking through the window or at our reflection
(8 min read)
In my last blog ‘mirror mirror on the wall’, I started to explore reflective practice and what this really is. I introduced two themes, the first being the ladder of inference which relates to how our biases, assumption and beliefs influence our actions and behaviours. The second being Johari’s window where we and others will have known and unknown views of ourselves which inevitably result in blind spots of actions and behaviours.
I want to explore reflective practice a little more by starting with a short story from Wayne Dyer (you can find the original video of Wayne recounting this here). Wayne describes the moment you are in your house with your house keys in your hand and the power goes out, killing all the lights. You drop you keys so you start grappling around to find them on the floor. Unable to find them, you look up and see the streetlights are on outside so decide to go outside to search for the keys under the streetlight. Your neighbour sees you looking for the keys and comes out to help. After a minute or two, your neighbour asks where you dropped the keys. You explain you dropped them inside the house. When the neighbour questions why you are searching for the keys outside when the keys were lost inside, you explain it is easier to look for the keys outside in the light rather than inside where it is dark!
This story is used as a metaphor to explain how we may perceive the struggles we may face and where we start to look for solutions. The dropped keys are our struggle. The darkness of the inside is a reference to us and just how challenging it can be to explore ourselves and our personal contribution to the struggle and what we could do resolve this? The streetlight outside is a reference to the rest of the world and everyone in it. We may find it easier to explore the world and others by identifying their impact on our struggles. Simply, it is easier to assign blame for our struggles on events, circumstances, or people than it is to look at ourselves first. Simply put, are we looking at the reflection in the mirror to look internally or looking through the window to look externally. Even the neighbour that comes to help can be seen as a reference to our critical friend or mentor of what we tell them about our struggle. A good critical friend or mentor, however, will direct us to back to the darkness inside.
Why do we tend to look externally first before looking internally? Simply, because it is hard to look within ourselves both from a skills perspective and what we may find out about ourselves. Reflective practice is simply a feedback loop of learning. Learning, specifically reflective practice, is a skill. As with all skills, they need practice to see improvements. To see improvements, we need a clear idea of what good looks like and work towards honing out skills to become closer to ‘good’. Further, this requires support in being able to determine our progress and requires deliberate attempts to be better, which takes time. How I reflected 15 years ago is wildly different to today – I am more deliberate and targeted and therefore more effective in turning insights into action. But it has taken me several years and a lot of support from others (which I still use today) to be better.
The second part is around what may find out about ourselves. Referring to the ladder of inference, the way in which we respond maybe due to the very fabric of our beliefs, assumptions, and biases. To truly reflect on what matters most, we may have to explore, even challenge these which is never easy. These can be deep rooted and stubbornly hard to be inquisitive about. This where the themes within Johari’s window maybe useful in providing unknown perspectives or truths to us, which again can be incredibly difficult to accept, let alone act upon.
My experiences of mentoring others have also highlighted another interesting insight. While there maybe unknowns about ourselves, there are also knowns which we simply choose to ignore. The fact we are aware of our beliefs, biases, assumptions or behaviours but choose not to act upon them becomes intriguing. Experience has shown me that those who choose not to do anything are not deliberately trying to make things worse for themselves or others. If often comes down to one or a combination of need, motivation, and capability. Sometimes we are aware but do not know how to make a positive change. Other times, we simply cannot see the need to change or are not motivated to change. These last two are often seen together. The reasons for the choices are excellent places to start with our reflective practice but may need further support to work through these.
Wayne Dyer goes on to explain that we are ones with the struggles and expecting someone else to change or something outside of our control to better does nothing to help with us exploring and reflecting on ourselves. To paraphrase Epictetus, ‘our mind is complicit with the provocation’. We have allowed our context and those within it to provoke us. Once we are comfortable with this idea that we have a high degree of control on to what degree of complicity we allow our mind to be provoked, we can do something about it… if we choose to!
I originally came from a sports science and coaching background with my thinking being influenced by what I have been exposed to and applied myself. I share this as one area which I believe has significant crossover to reflective practice from its original purpose and extensively use within reflective practice and mentoring is the constraints-led approach. Its original intention is within movement science, but it leans heavily on dynamical systems theory, specifically the idea of environment, task and individual. These themes are particularly useful within reflective practice. The environment is external to us such as the cultural norms at play. The task is also external to us such as the completion of a specific project, the available resources, the people we collaborate with and the desired outcome. The individual is us; our beliefs, biases, and assumptions and it is also those we interact with. When reflecting on a specific or series of experiences, being able to work through each of these areas allows us to build context and how they may interplay with one another. For example, how do the cultural norms influence how we collaborate with others? Conversely how do our own behaviour influence the cultural norms and allow us to collaborate with others? By starting to unpick these areas, we can gain deeper insights into what we did, what influenced us to do this, the impact of this (on us, others, the task, and the environment) and what we may want to amplify or dampen in the future. Reflective practice is not solely about changing future action, it is equally about repeatedly applying what we do well. This framework is structured enough to start being deliberate with reflective practice by exploring the interplays between how we influence and what influences us but loose enough to allow us to explore in a way which is most useful to us.
Environment-Task-Individual framework
There are many models of reflective practice and we will all adopt personal approaches which may work for us. The intention is not to replicate or replace existing practices with this framework. It is to provide simplicity by highlighting areas which we may want to focus on while reflecting. I deliberately use the term framework. Frameworks continue to evolve as we evolve, and their use reflects how we each individually interacts with them. They are not rigid constraining structures but structures to liberate our thinking. This allows for diversity of thought and diversity in how we might want to effectively reflect. The most important point is finding something that works for us both in acquiring and applying news insights and experiences. In my previous blog I identified a digital reflection tool created to help with capturing our reflections. If this is something of interest, do let me know and can discuss access to it.
Digital reflections tool
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