Hi, and welcome to Section four. Here we will look at some factors that can influence and support your critical reflection practice. Safety, a sense of safety is absolutely essential to critical reflection. You need to feel comfortable and free to express yourself and embrace the exploration. Say from what fear, criticism and judgment for starters, we live in a mistake phobic society and admitting an error often means taking a risk. It is so important to be honest and open during the critical reflection process.

You need to do what you can to give yourself a sense of security. If you choose to go through the process with another person, a friend, family member or colleague, Justin Make sure that this person is someone you trust someone who will not judge, blame, manipulate or compete with you. Someone who will be kind, generous and constructive. And if nobody like that is available, doing it by yourself is just fine. However, some of us need to remember to be kind to ourselves. If this applies to you.

Remember that once you have reflected on an experience, especially a mistake, it should be easier to let go of it and all the associated emotions, you have assumed responsibility and taken care of the situation. You can put it behind you. In resources, there is a link to a podcast and website on self compassion that may help if you're being extra hard on yourself. Sometimes, your reflection may make you aware of the necessity of confronting someone or speaking truth to power. How can you ensure that the confrontation is beneficial for you and others? are you most likely to be heard?

There are many great resources out there that can help you with this. The book Crucial Conversations tools for talking when stakes are high. BY KERRY Patterson and Joseph granny is a good one. They also have a website, which I have on the resource page. Creativity and critical reflection. Einstein said that creativity is intelligence having fun, so be sure to have a little fun with your reflections.

Engaging your left as well as your right brain through a creative outlet can lead you to fresh insights and ideas about an issue. It can allow you to see it from a different perspective and open up possibilities. You can write a poem, draw a picture, dance some feelings. Make a scrapbook or Memory Box, use your imagination. The possibilities are endless. As an example, one group of nurse educators Use metaphor to develop their reflections.

Each picked a musical instrument that she felt described herself as an instrument of care and explored the insights that evoked through creative writing and art. They report that the exercise deepen their reflective awareness, and that they now encourage their students to explore on the metaphoric level. From a workplace perspective, the people at the website creativity at work define creativity as the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity is characterized by the ability to perceive the world in new ways to find hidden patterns to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. They offer ideas and workshops on how to apply creativity in the workplace. On a personal level, there are sites like the creative mind that can provide you with information and inspiration for exploring In your creativity and personal growth, I've included these web addresses and more on the resource handout, mindfulness and critical reflection.

One thing that can really help reflection, including reflection in action is mindfulness, or stepping out of our inner dialogue and just attending to the physical, emotional, and intellectual occurrences in the moment. It can help you get in touch with the feelings, physical sensations and thoughts you have about the situation you were reflecting on. You may identify as I often do, that not being mindful was one of the contributors to the event. The website mindful.org describes mindfulness as the basic human ability to be fully present aware of where we are and what we're doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what's going on around us. They state that everyone has the capacity to be mindful, but that most of us would benefit from practice on a daily basis. They offer exercises to help us achieve it.

Intuition and deep knowing reflection gives us the freedom. We could even say the mandate to think outside the box to even go beyond thinking itself and reach deeper. Have you ever come up with a solution for a particularly thorny problem after letting it go and getting a good night's sleep? The human brain and psyche has depths and resources that logic can't fathom. There are tools you can use to help access this resource. I've already mentioned creativity.

Any form of creative effort can get you in touch with your deeper knowing. Working with your dreams can also read critical insights for those who pray leaving the issue. In the hands of the Divine however you define this can be invaluable. Sometimes it's as simple as attending to a gut feeling or as mythologist myself kilmeade puts it listening to that calm, quiet voice that often gets drowned out in the drama of our lives. Getting perfection. I know I'm talking about this a lot.

But I guess from my perspective, I can't say enough about it. Although I've always known I'm far from perfect, I've perceived perfection however, I defined it at the time, as an absolute good, a goal to strive for a measuring stick to assess my progress, the chiasm This caused between who I was and who I thought I should be, and the rocky minefields in between have led me to consider that perfection may not be a stain option. Consider the psychological pain that the disconnect between who I am and who I think I should be causes. My self esteem takes a huge hit. It is always the loser. One day a few years ago, my husband, patient and for bearing witness to my struggles with perfection.

Nasm came home with a book called the spirituality of imperfection, storytelling and the search for meaning by Ernest Kurtz, and Catherine Ketchum. It has become staple food in my life ever since the author's first point out that spirituality in any way you choose to define it would not exist without imperfection. If our lives were perfect, where would be the impetus to strive for more, to call out to something beyond ourselves? The relationship between spirituality and imperfection goes further. The author state of spirituality begins with a cry for help. It becomes a way of living with or putting up with our human imperfection.

Self acceptance is key, both to respecting yourself and having compassion for others. If you can honestly acknowledge your own shortcomings, you will be compassionate about others as well. If you can't relate to the word, spirituality, no worries. Well, my favorite word learning is definitely not synonymous with with spirituality. There are some strong parallels and associations. For one thing, if we are perfect, we would not have to learn.

Secondly, learning is another way of living with imperfection. A much better alternative Believe me than beating yourself up overextending yourself or basically trying to be someone you're not. It gives us something constructive to do. When we come face to face with a limitation or mistake. We can always learn something from a mistake. Often they are really golden opportunities in disguise.

The Japanese have a concept called Wabi Sabi, which is about finding beauty and the old, the worn, the imperfect. I find this perspective refreshing, a different way to look at the wrinkles that life brings us. Closely related to Wabi Sabi is the Japanese practice of kin Suki. broken pottery or other items are repaired with an amalgam Contains gold. This will often render the broken object more valuable than it was in the first place. The break lines are proudly exhibited as something that makes the object even more precious.

Much like that you might say that we grow in character in value become more precious by taking what what life gives us and making the most of it. values. Your values are your principles and standards of behavior. They are the goods that you consider most important in life. While we usually adopt the values of our families, culture, education, system and religion, we also have a core set of values that are unique to us. As we mature, we often become more aware of these intrinsic values, the ones that resonate with our deepest affinities.

We also adopt values that makes sense to us from our own experience. Knowing your values and applying them in your critical reflection can help you make decisions In resolve situations, you may decide that a comfortable job is not worth giving up your value of honesty or integrity. Maybe family is a primary value for you. And your 70 Hour Work Week is putting you into conflict. Maybe your value of being close to nature will help you decide whether to make a move. Sometimes the disorientating component of a dilemma has to do with a value conflict.

It's always worth asking, does this situation or solution align with my values or ideals. There is a link on the resource page to an article that explains what values are and how to get in touch with your own values. Some scholars feel that challenging assumptions is very important for learning. The English Oxford Dictionary defines assumption as a thing that is accepted as true or a certain to happen without proof. Many assumptions are harmful Lest I assume that water will come out of my tap when I turn it on, so I don't have to give it much thought. But often we make assumptions about situations, other people and ourselves that limit our perspective and opportunities.

We may assume that someone has the correct information when they really don't, or that they feel a certain way about something, or that someone else will be bringing the coffee and doughnuts to the meeting. We often make assumptions that are based on societal norms. For example, it is better to be thin, or we're only the latest style. Maybe it is in some situations, but it is always good to ask what is my assumption based on? How do I know it's true? And often in the state of advertisement in media, it is very interesting to consider who is profiting from what I assume.

Catharsis and emotions. critical reflection involves working with and through emotions. As well as through thoughts and ideas. catharsis is the process of releasing strong emotions through a particular activity or experience. critical reflection can sometimes be a cathartic activity. This can be very healing.

But for most of us powerful emotions such as anger or jealousy, often feel scary and overwhelming. We are not taught how to handle them constructively. We start the critical reflection process with the question what, which ideally helps us to step outside the situation and look at it objectively. This can provide some solid ground from which to examine and process our feelings. In many cases, this is enough to resolve them. Sometimes, however, the situation is too fresh and our emotions are too raw.

Or perhaps the memories are deeper woundings are being triggered if you find yourself continuing to be overwhelmed you Emotionally while doing critical reflection, there are several things you can do. Karla McLaren, in her book, the language of emotions, offers some great tools to deal with overwhelming, but not deeply pathologic emotions. One of these that I especially like she calls conscious complaining, it consists of picking an inanimate object and your surroundings, addressing it by saying, I would like to do some conscious complaining. Then proceed to vent out loud or to yourself. Make sure you are alone so you can say exactly what you feel. Use profane language, make irrational statements that you would never share with anyone else.

Stamp your feet or just get your feelings out whatever way you can. When you feel you're finished, you then thank the object and tell it you are done for now. If this is not helpful, you can consider counseling either professionally or through discussion with someone you trust. Sometimes there's Nothing like a sympathetic and attentive ear. Doing this emotional work is important. I have found that the best solutions are not the ones that come up with in the heat of feeling.

But the ones that arrive after I've honored and understood the information contained within my feelings and release their negative impact. practice exercise two is a little reflection on this section of the course. Think about the concepts and resources we've just covered. Which ones did you find helpful? Which ones not so much. Is there anything you didn't see here that you feel should be added?

If so please tell me about that. I welcome you to email me with any thoughts or ideas about this section. I hope you found this section helpful. The idea was to dive a little deeper into some aspects of critical reflection that may help you in your practice. In the next section, I'll show you some other models of critical reflection that you may find useful to apply In place of or along with the what? So what now what model