Reflection as a Catalyst for Change - My Research and Ideas

Reflection as a catalyst for Change

How often do you reflect though out the day? How often do you come up with an amazing business idea? Or a fantastic class you want to set up? And how often do these reflections create change? 

After reading through the blogs of the campus session in which I unfortunately had to miss. I decided to do a bit of further research of my own and delve further into reflection and how it affects me within my professional practise. 

Gillie Bolton uses an interesting metaphor to describe this power of reflection.  One metaphor for reflection is the mirror which projects back the object being looked at--as it is.  She, instead, prefers the notion of the “Looking Glass” out of Alice in Wonderland:

“Alice ... has just crawled through the mirror.  She looks around her and, in this looking-glass-land, even "the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive." In my experience, the things seen from the Reflexive Writing side of the looking glass are or are about to become, all alive.” 

(Reflection in the Electronic 

Writing Classroom

L. Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College)

Bolton points, here, to the transformational nature of reflection for the person doing the reflecting. Notice that reflection is represented as a catalyst that has the effect of a change—a change of knowledge, a change of awareness, even a change of consciousness.

As a performer we tend to be harsh on ourselves. Failure and Success; two words which we use to define how well we are doing. If you get cut from an audition - FAIL - If you fall out that pirouette - FAIL. We spend so much time being hard on ourselves rather than reflecting how we can do better in the future. The word failure being the common denominator stopping changes.

Gibbs created a reflective cycle to follow in our professional careers.

However I read an interesting article written by Jonathan Payne.  Jonathan Payne is a High Performance Mental Conditioning Coach working with high performance athletes, entrepreneurs and business executives. He lives in South Africa. You can find more of his articles at http://www.jonathanpayne.co.za. As he deals with high performing athletes I believe it was more relevant to us as performers.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Learn-From-Failure-And-Become-A-Top-Performer&id=8613603

The article explores how we all will fail at some point. Any successes has been a direct result of failure. What the article explores is how we reflect and learn. He uses a learning cycle developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford to help reflect and develop failure.

Here's how the learning cycle rolls out:

1 Doing something, having an experience

2 Reflecting on the experience

3 Concluding from the experience, developing a theory

4 Planning the next steps, to apply or test the theory

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8613603

The DOING part is for example going to the 5th audition this week and being cut first round.  You know you are a fantastic dancer, you were top of your class at college, your assessments were top of the class, but your just not getting there. So you have experienced the doing part but you haven't quite reached you expectations. 

The next stage is to REFLECT - just simply doing the auditions will not help you learn. You need to reflect on this learning starts as you begin to reflect on what has happened.

In this case it could be a case of - “I fell off my turn” - “ I didn't perform the choreography in a way that they wanted” 

The next step is critical - CONCLUDING. Here is when we make conclusions based on our reflection. It is at this point where the danger of self-recrimination and negative self-talk rears itself. Thoughts such as "I'm a failure", "I will never be as good as... ", "I think I should give up", begin to arise. This is where we as performers need to block out that inner voice and create an action plan moving forward. “This week i will concentrate on my performance skills” 

This is where we as performers should formulate a PLAN of action. Creating a plan we need to ignore all inklings of self doubt. Focus on forward planning, what we can do to improve on our failures and see failures as an opportunity to learn rather than hitting walls and damaging our progress. 

A fantastic read I encourage all to read is “The Secret - by Rhonda Byrne” It focuses on positive energy and the way it can help us move forward and It has helped me keep positive through my injuries and subconsciously keeps you on track professionally - I highly recommend this book to all professionals wanting to succeed in their goals. 

The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE by Thomas J. Peters (Author) - This book is something that was recommended to me by my colleague at work. It focuses on small changes you can make to big differences in your life. 

In summary - Thought processes are vital to become successful within our performance careers. We are going to be knocked back 9/10 - but if we follow the ideas and learning developed by Peter Honey and Alan Mumford we can reflect on these failures and create change which ultimately will make us a true professional and successful in any career path that a we choose! 

Thoughts and comments always welcome.