1. Write down reflections to slow thinking and speed up results.
My crisis support skills always developed at the speed of my self awareness.
Put another way, my growth was as slow as my ability to reflect and learn about myself. If you don’t write reflectively it might be for the following reasons:
- Can’t be bothered
- It’s kind of uncomfortable
- Don’t know where to start
Your practice will greatly improve when you overcome those hurdles, pick up a pen and paper and start scribbling.
2. Make a list of atrocious sentence stems.
Can you guess why starting with awfully cringe sentence stems is perfect for beginners?
When I first sat down to write reflective practice, this activity destroyed my resistance. It was both fun and empowering. Fun because of how silly I made them, but empowering because I was giving myself permission to suck!
Armed with my list of trash tier sentence stems, I was ready to actually begin.
3. Treat your list like a draft, work on it each shift for ten minutes.
Short bursts of focused energy, applied regularly over a long period of time, massively improved my skill set.
Every shift I’d focus on one crappy sentence stem and improve it, just with the pen and paper. At one point or another I’d get to use it during shift. In this way, the list slowly improves my practice while my practice slowly improves the list. Positive feedback loop!
Key to remember: release attachment to the outcome and trust in the process.