“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”

-Alexis Carrel

Let us begin with questions.

“Am you aware that you exist?”
“Are you aware of the thoughts in your head?”
“How are you aware of your own thoughts?”
“How do you know that you are aware of your own thoughts?”

The answer to these questions is: “I… just know that I’m aware of these things.”

With that answer we begin to understand ourselves as self-aware beings. And today we explore one of its facets: the ability to self-reflect.

It’s something that I find myself pondering as I release old fears in my recent meditations.

I find it fascinating that the field of science is often quoted as a source of unchanging FACTS. This is because the whole point of science is to question itself. We question existing facts (or ‘facts’) with new hypotheses, and proceed with experimentation. Either way, we progress through our new findings or learn something from our failure.

In essence, the scientific process is one of constant reflection and experimentation.

This capacity to self-reflect lead to discoveries that make today’s world possible. So why not prepare the future generation by sharing such discoveries with them? They only stand to progress from where we left off, right? But that’s where despite good intentions, we get it wrong.

In our haste to teach the new generation, the education system makes a crucial mistake:

We make students memorize facts, and fail to teach them the scientific process.

We place emphasis on the shiny facts, and miss the essence of the discovery/ learning process.

In such a system, critical thinking is the last thing on a student’s mind. Why think about ‘why’ something works when memorizing the facts involved guarantees better results? The way we structure our exams says it all: isolating students in a competitive environment and encouraging them to regurgitate facts.

This phenomenon isn’t just restricted to schools only. It’s the same in the workplace, where only results matter and mistakes are regarded as cardinal sins. While some workplaces and education systems may encourage self-reflection and learning from mistakes, the converse (unfortunately) happens to be the overwhelming norm for the rest of the world.

This is not to say that rote memorization or employment is bad, but rather our blind faith and exclusive reliance on them can be detrimental to us; especially in the absence of self-reflection.

Is it a wonder then, that the vast majority of society feels the following:

1. Apathy towards work/study.
2. Life is lived on repeat/ auto-pilot.
3. Threatened by job loss due to looming AI competency.
4. A lack of curiosity/ wonder towards life.
5. Preference for cheap, guaranteed pleasure over self-reflection

So what can we do if we want to start incorporating self-reflection in our way of life?

The journey can be simplified like this:

We begin by reducing our need for cheap dopamine. We compliment this by introducing meditation, prayer, and self- reflecting into our day. This will make us feel like dogshit, but that’s where the magic happens. The goal is to slowly trade our reliance on complete certainty for the magic of the unknown. Practically speaking, it could look like lesser time spent on Youtube/ Tiktok, and more time at the gym/ cooking.

Why is this important?

1. What more authentic way to live life than to experiment, learn and grow all the time?

2. All the information of the human collective is available at your fingertips.

3. The current education systems in many countries aim to produce compliant employees. AI will render this obsolete.

4. Everyone has a unique perspective, and actualizing your full potential only benefit everyone.

5. Your life is worth it.

6. You’re going to die anyway, so why not make it interesting?

To tie my points all back together: self reflection is what enables human beings to be what we are. Many of us (myself included) found ourselves conditioned out of it by well-meaning elders. But we can take our power back and create a better world, by taking the first step in our own hearts and minds. While there are merits to the tried and true ways of consistency, it should not be the exclusive way to live. One can and should strive to pair the former with the wisdom that self-reflection offers, and discover where one’s optimal balance lies.

Whatever you start with, don’t force yourself to get it right. For some it’s a lifelong journey, and for others they get it quickly. What matters is that you start, and no better moment to do it than now.