Reflection and Discernment in
a Dynamic World

 

Reflection

 

Reflection is a careful thought about oneself, one’s behaviour and one’s
beliefs. It means reviewing past experiences and making insights about them. Reflection
is like looking into the mirror and saying what you see. (“Self reflection | Unison”, 2017)

 

It is necessary, because it encourages personal growth. Reflection helps
identify our mistakes and how we can improve on them in the future. It also strengthens a person’s emotional intelligence
and self-regulation, because during self-reflection, you have the opportunity
of checking your strengths, weaknesses, values, and goals and to also check
your impact on the people around you. Self-regulation involves being able to
correct oneself and adapt to changing situations. This is the building of a
successful life.

 

Reflection enables one to act with Integrity. This occurs as a result of
conscious effort, reviewing all the actions made and decisions taken and
comparing them to the values you hold in esteem would help you monitor and
control yourself and slowly help you become a person of integrity. Over time, reviewing and reflecting on your
past will help you solidify the decisions you make according to the values, it
helps in effective decision making and asserts confidence because you are very
comfortable with the decisions you take.

 

Self-reflection is usually difficult at first or could be even
embarrassing but after some time, it becomes efficient and very useful to you.

It also helps to develop critical thinking skills and creativity. (“Self
reflection | Unison”, 2017) There is no one superior way to reflect and it
is important to choose a method or process that fits you. One model is the
Gibbs Reflection Cycle. It consists of six stages: Description, Feelings,
Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusions and Personal Action Plans. In this case, reflection
is more of a cycle. (Finlay,2008) Conclusions drawn from the evaluation and
analysis stages help the person create a new plan for action. When this new plan
is implemented, the process begins again to reflect on these new actions.

 

 

Discernment

 

Discernment is the ability to perceive clearly the differences between
things or people, and make decisions based on those perceptions. The first step
is acknowledging that we are not all the same. Some people are smarter, better
looking, louder, more annoying than others.

Discernment means setting firm boundaries and measuring everything we encounter
against these standards; it is like gauging everything you come across to see
if it is aligned with your personal goals and values. Lastly, discernment is
the cognitive ability to distinguish: the appropriate and inappropriate, the
real and unreal, the eternal and temporary and the good from the better.

 

This is important, because discernment allows a person to make good
choices that are aligned with their values and goals. If you have a friend that
is known to be very loud and restless person, you know not to make that person
you study partner, because your goal of achieving an “A” may not be achieved. “A
person who is negative, puts people down, and carries around anger all the time
has bad energy – we choose not to spend time with them because it’s simply not
healthy for us.  We don’t have to tell
other people “that’s a bad person”.  We
know they aren’t good for us and it will become self-evident for others who use
their discernment. Discernment gives us clear perception and the ability to
make good choices without having to be better or worse than anyone else.”
(Habash, 2005)

 

It is important to distinguish discernment from judgment. First,
discernment is able to separate the person from the action. A judgmental person
goes beyond discerning differences in people to making inferences about their
overall worthiness. Discernment is walking into a classroom, recognizing that
it stinks and deciding to stay outside. Judgment is recognizing that is stinks
and then deciding that the students in the class are bad people with bad
hygiene and are inconsiderate to the feelings of other people. Also, discernment involves one’s self and one’s own life choices, whereas
judging often means judging the actions or motivations of others, or other
outside factors. The whole point of discernment is to make choices for yourself
that are aligned with your own value and goals. Judgment, on the other hand, is
like discernment without reason. It is not focused on what is right for you,
but on the other person and their actions and the implications of those
actions. It is impossible to discern on behalf of someone else. (Sinicki, 2017)
Lastly, a person who judges others feels inadequate. They feel that they aren’t
good enough. Not that what they do isn’t good enough, but that they are not
enough. They want to dump their negative feelings on others. They judge others
as “bad,” and then, momentarily, they can feel superior to someone or
something else. (Stewart, 2017)

 

 

 

Dynamic World

The world in which we live is
a dynamic one; it changes. Life is not a finished product, but an on-going
process and thus, people, the environment, and our goals are constantly
evolving. In the midst of this constant evolution, reflection and discernment
have become a necessity. As technology keeps improving and with the creation of
the Internet, we are now bombarded with so may different types of information,
in the form of articles, videos, and social media. It is important to use our
discernment to distinguish what is true and what is false and also what is
appropriate for us to see and take part in.

 

Also, society and its
values keep changing. In the past, slavery was an accepted practice and now it
is not. Before, homosexuality was not accepted, but now it is. With all these
new changes, we need to discern which ones we, personally, can accept. Even
more specifically, our circle of friends and acquaintances changes as we move
through the different stages of our lives. It
is important to differentiate those that harm us or hinder our journey and
those that divert the focus of the journey. Our own values and goals
change as we grow up, so it is important to reflect every once in a while to
make sure that they are still relevant to our current situation. Our perceptions of self and others need a constant
re-visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contributions to the Group Work

 

For my contribution to the
group work, I was in charge of doing the research for the Discernment aspect of
our topic. I also ended up researching on “Dynamic World” as well. It was left
up to me to create the PowerPoint presentation for the group. Also, I ended up
making the presentation in front of the class as well. I feel that I made more
than enough contributions to the group work and discussion.