which of these is an example of reflective writing

which of these is an example of reflective writing

Reflective Writing: A Powerful Tool for Self-Discovery and Personal Growth

1. Introduction

Reflective writing can also help you in professional life. It is a way of thinking more carefully about what you do, and how it may affect you or other people in the future. This is a key learning skill to being an effective leader or manager. This type of writing can also help you find a new job, or task by helping you clarify what your past experience has been and how the new experience can fit in with your life. Whether you like to write or not, there is no denying that reflective writing will become a part of your life at some point, be it informally or in life-changing decisions. So why not learn to do it well? It is one of the most enlightening types of writing once you get into it.

You can use it as a tool to learn about your subject as part of a wider study strategy. It can help you clarify what you know and what you don’t know. It can help you identify the best and worst types of information and learning. You can use it as a way to reflect on your experiences and learn from them. This is usually called learning from experience. This style of learning can help you remember things better and for longer. It is also a valuable skill to have in the workplace. You can use it as a way to become clear about your own goals and what you want to achieve. This can be mentally, personally in day to day life, or on a specific project or task. As you become more skilled in reflective writing you may wish to use it more to progress your career.

Reflective writing is a personal form of writing. It requires you to let your thoughts flow onto paper without concern for the spelling, punctuation, or even grammar. The goal is to find out what you think about the biggest questions in your life and the world around you. This form of writing is a recursive learning process. It helps you learn more about the topic you are writing about. It also helps you learn more about yourself and even how you learn. It is a way of helping you to become an active, aware and critical learner.

2. The Benefits of Reflective Writing

Reflective writing is something that everyone should try at some point in their life. It is a valuable and entertaining endeavor that can aid each and every one of us, personally, academically, and professionally. Reflective writing takes this a stage further by also encouraging the individual to learn from their mistakes and make more positive choices in the future (Fisher, 2011). Each experience we go through in life often has potential lessons. We usually gain the most from an experience when we are right in the middle of or going through it. This is simply because we are living the experience. But the moment we are finished with the experience, be it a good or bad one, we can take a step back and quite often learn something about that experience. Reflective writing can also help us to improve our critical thinking by enabling us to step back and think more about what has happened to us. This is due to the fact that reflective writing involves an experience or event, and later analyzes it. We can think about what happened, why it happened, how we feel about it, and what we can learn from it. This kind of approach to an experience will result in a higher level of cognitive thought or an intellectual effort. By reflecting on the experience, we can also learn much more about how we usually think when facing an experience. Through this, we can change a negative way of thinking in a similar experience to a more positive one. This, in turn, will make the actual experience a more positive one as well and create a new positive cycle in our lives.

3. Techniques for Effective Reflective Writing

Another use of the planning process is a reminder of the criteria. If your reflective piece is based on a quote, culminating in whether you agree or not, you should not forget this question in analysis about a particular experience. A well-planned piece will have a constant reminder to the question or criteria. This will guarantee focused writing.

Firstly, you should take the opportunity to plan. Planning the structure of your piece can give you an outline to follow. This will make your writing clear and there will be no need to digress. Your plan can be a list of main points, or a more detailed table. Consider your main points and the order in which you address them. This can be done in a learning diary and would be a short “methodology” of your reflective process. Whatever your plan, you should be able to see a clear progression of points so as to fulfill the assignment purpose, i.e. an analysis of a past situation in order to inform future action.

When you are writing a reflective piece, it is vital to employ effective technique. An effective technique will make it easier for the reader to follow the piece in a logical way. This means that it should be well structured and also that the writing should flow well.

4. Examples of Reflective Writing

Throughout my nursing research in various practice areas, I’ve used reflection as a tool to look back upon events and analyze whether or not my actions were good and whether or not something should be changed in that regard for the future. I’ve used many different reflective models, an example being the Gibbs Reflective Cycle (Britishcouncil.org) (cited in Jasper, M 2003) which states 6 stages: Description of the event, Emotions, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and an Action Plan. The use of reflection in my own learning has led me to believe that reflection should be an ongoing and continuous process if one is to continually improve themselves in their personal and professional lives. Reflecting back upon my first use of the Gibbs Cycle, I’ve found that my motivation for actions was clouded by feelings of irritation and anger towards the event, and it didn’t lead me to a rational analysis of the situation and how it could have been handled better. This in itself has shown me how deep reflection can uncover flaws and lead me to make changes in my approach.

In one nursing course, where we had an entire unit on quality and safety in patient care, we had been assigned to write an essay about our stories where patient safety and/or patient quality improvement were demonstrated. We were taught to utilize Driscoll’s model of reflection which included what, so what, and now what questions and write down our findings. At first, I found this somewhat unusual as record-keeping doesn’t seem to be an essay and isn’t something I had done in great detail since I was a student. Whether or not it was helpful compared to other methods for reflective writing, to pinpoint areas that were of professional development and much so to develop a strategy for better future practice. An essay was set to show the findings using Driscoll’s model and for the reflection to be deep and meaningful.

5. Conclusion: Embrace the Power of Reflection

The power of reflection has been made clear in this tutorial, but reflecting is only half the job for information needs to be applied, practiced, as awareness and change begins to take effect. This awareness and the changes in how we see the world and our place in it may occasionally cause discomfort as we are greeted with cognitive dissonance. This discomfort is a natural part of the cycle of learning and a sign of the increasing congruence between what we do and what we value. The process of reflection and growth is also cyclical; as one question is answered, another may appear and the process of asking and reflecting on questions may be repeated as the learner moves back and forth between the action and the reflection. However, the ultimate outcome of the increased awareness of the learner usually results in a change in behavior, attitude, or even the very world the learner exists in. Reflection has a profound effect on the emotional and even spiritual levels of the learner, as it is often a deeply personal effort, with quiet disconnected moments. At its very best, reflection changes our very reality. We have examined the cognitive and emotional processes of reflection and the deep changes that it creates. Therefore, we conclude that indeed reflection is a powerful tool for self-development.