The Importance Of Reflection In Life

Sports has always been a huge part of my life. I would be the one team player who took the sports season a little bit too seriously. I was the number 1 doubles player on my school's JV tennis team. Unfortunately, I fractured my ankle during my junior year and wasn't able to play with my team. I was devastated, but I didn’t allow myself to become disconnected from my team. I became the team manager to allow myself to still play a role in my team, despite my injury. I would record scores to my division leaders and take pictures to post on the website I created for my team. After the season was over, my doctor told me my ankles required surgery to become fully healed. I knew that meant I couldn’t continue to play tennis, but I didn’t want to give

People live their lives with many transitions, good or bad they provide us with experiences and knowledge. The life experiences we endure provide insight and wisdom to share with others. In life we are continuously looking for fulfilling experiences such as happiness, success, love or contentment. The thing people tend to forget is that these experiences that bring happiness is a basic mood or emotion not a purpose or an endpoint. Reflection provides self-awareness by improving oneself can present a sense of purpose that provides direction to how we live our life. There are moments of reflection that focus on the

making Practice-Based Learning work Reflection on PRACTICE A resource commissioned by the Making Practice Based Learning Work project, an educational development project funded through FDTL Phase 4 Project Number 174/02 and produced by staff from the University of Ulster. www.practicebasedlearning.org Author Patricia McClure School of Health Sciences, University of Ulster www.practicebasedlearning.org contents Reflection on Practice 02

I feel strongly and I am convince that the fact that I had a headache and blocked sinuses affected my learning during the course time.

Reflection is a serious thought or consideration that contributes to the lifelong process of personal development. Similarly, the two concepts of reflection and personal development are intertwined in a way that one contributes to the others success. In the Untitled Image by Sarolta Ban, a man is holding the hand of his younger self in a forest of paint brush trees. While walking through the forest, he reflects on his life where personal development has led him the accomplishments he has obtained today. Reflection is a key aspect in his personal development as it allows him to build confidence in everything he does and enhances his performance.

Individually, we reflect on things we have done in other to improve our ideas. Personal development is a way we as individuals reflect, assess and review our strength and weakness in other to set life purposes which attain and maximise our potentials. In everyday speech, Reflection can often be overlapped with reviewing in relation to common sense but according to the RCN (2017), “reflection is a conscious effort to think about an activity or incident that allows us to consider what was positive or challenging and if appropriate plan might be enhanced, improved or done differently on future”. Kottkamp (1990) described reflection as “a cycle of paying deliberate attention to owns actions in relation to intentions…for expanding one’s views and making choices about improved ways of acting in the future, or during the action itself” (p. 182). Schon (1983) in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” suggested that there are two types of reflection we are involved in regarding an experience. He described these 2 sections of reflection as ‘reflection in action’ and ‘reflection on action’. Reflection in action is a process required by professionals to assess and observe their own experience in practice as they occur while reflection on action has been described as a process used to review, examine, explore and evaluate their previous practices with an insight aim to improve their future practices. In relation to professional development, reflection is important to nursing in the sense that it helps detect areas for development which helps improve their skills and to learn from their past experiences whereby it provides the best suitable solution for the future experiences. (RCN 2017, Kottkamp 1990, Finlay 2008, life Coach Directory 2017, Schon 1983).

Reflection means deliberately taking time to review the happenings of a certain matter and processing how that matter was handled, how it could have been better handled, and how it should be handled in the event that it happens again. This is a practice that I have made a part of my daily life. I reflect over my day on my twenty minute drive home. It allows me to process my day with a critical eye. Often, I feel that I could have handled things differently. There are also days that I feel that I have handled situations remarkably, and I am proud of myself. By critiquing my behaviors and the occurrences that have happened throughout the day, I am able to learn the areas in which I need to grow.

Rolfe (2011) state that reflection is a mental process which include thinking, feeling, imagining and learning about what was happening in the past and which could be considered as a personal experience. Reflection is a continuous debate on what might have happened differently and if this could affect differently the present and the future regarding the outcome if is positive or negative. Experience underpin the process of reflection.

According to Howston-Jones (2013) reflection is not something that is out of the ordinary for everyone to do in their everyday lives. Reflection is the act of looking back on a situation, event or incident critically and making sense of it to learn from it and alter our actions to gain better outcomes should the same incident arise again (Capelhow, Crouch, Fisher & Walsh, 2013). As new experiences happen to everyone, everyday; it would be right to consider reflection as an ongoing process within everyone’s life, a process that is repeated, honed and a skill to be developed (McKenna, 1998).

This reflection paper is about Judy, a 40-year-old woman that migrated from Guyana to Canada with her husband and three children ages 5, 7, and 9. Judy has been married for twelve years, but she has been living in Ontario for ten years with her family. Her husband left her for a younger woman and wants nothing to do with her and the children. Judy says she is very angry, and finds herself crying uncontrollably at times. Also by her tone of voice and the expression on her face, I could see the resentment that she feels for her husband. Judy has never worked outside the home, and her husband took care of all the rent and bills. Now she feels that she is going into a state of depression as she is worried about how she is going to handle the responsibilities of caring for her three children and paying the bills without having a job or any help from friends and relatives.

Reflection is considered to be a process that can be developed to support continuous learning as well as personal and professional development. This can include the process of reflective writing as a means of capturing the thought and experiences (Ghaye,1998). A significant relationship is found between reflective writing and academic learning, as one can identify the need for self-development, critical review, awareness of individual functions and decisions. Reflective writing is valuable for students to identify their role when working with others (Anne Sen, 2010).

Reflection, a small and minuscule word in the English language that can do so much. Many reflect every day, some subconsciously, others knowingly. However, the fact is that every individual reflects in some way, shape, or form. One may ask, ¨What is the definition of reflection? The meaning?¨ This question is not simply answered. Every individual may have a slightly varied definition of the word. Some may think of it as looking at the past and creating goals. Others may see it as serious thought or consideration. Personally, I describe reflection as the act of looking back, to the past, on specific events and making judgments on those instances. As I approach the end of my Middle School career and advance further towards High School, reflection

What concepts, principles, or ideas that you have learned, do you think you will remember the most after you leave this class?

The aim of the reflective essay is to highlight my own personal development skills that I have developed during first semester of my module. However, in this report I will make sure my learning ability phase and what this module has allowed me to work and understand in improving my personal skills and purpose. My major aim is to develop and assess an in depth range of my personal traits as a student in order to endorse my future development plan.

Reflection helps one to improve especially when they can draw lessons from the positive and negative experiences of the past. It is an active process that enables individuals to understand how historical, social, cultural, as well as personal experiences contribute to how we study or learn. In any aspect of life, reflection can be applied to help individuals focus their efforts in getting the most out of different situations, and, therefore, improving self-performance and becoming lifelong learners.