Have you ever had one of those moments of self-awareness when some relationship or perhaps some conversation has just gone badly, and for some reason, you stop and think, “Why did that just happen? What did I do? What attitudes, behaviours and underlying thoughts did I bring to that conversation that contributed to what just happened?”
If you’ve ever managed to do that and also thought to yourself, “I really should do that more often and more thoughtfully,” then this conversation between Tony Payne and Caroline Spencer is for you. Also, if you’ve never stopped to think about yourself, your thought patterns and your behaviours, then this conversation is even more for you. It’s about healthy self-reflection and how we can develop good habits of self-reflection to serve others around you.
Links referred to:
- Getting Over Yourself: Developing a healthy self-reflection habit to serve those around you (Caroline Spencer)
- Centre for Global Mission event: Embracing Hard Ministry: The Bible and the practice of Global Mission (23 July)
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 33:41 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been checked against the audio and lightly edited, but still may contain errors. If quoting, please compare with the original audio.
Introduction
[00:00:00] Tony Payne: Have you ever had one of those moments of self-awareness when some relationship or perhaps some conversation has just gone badly, and for some reason, you stop and you start to think, “Why did that just happen?” And most particularly, “What did I do? What did I bring? What attitudes, what behaviours, what underlying thoughts did I bring to that conversation that contributed to what just happened?”
[00:00:28] Now, if you’ve ever managed to do that and you’ve thought to yourself, “I really should, perhaps, do that more often and more thoughtfully,” then today’s conversation on the Centre for Christian Living podcast is for you. And if you’ve never stopped to think about yourself and your thought patterns or your behaviours, then this conversation is even more for you. It’s about healthy self-reflection. That’s our topic on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast.
[Music]
[00:01:08] TP: Well, hello again. Welcome to another episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast. I’m Tony Payne. Great to have you with us again. And here at the CCL Podcast, as you probably know, our tagline is “bringing Biblical ethics to everyday issues”. And that’s what we do here every episode—is try and bring something of what the Bible says about God and us and the world and everything to the issues that we face as Christian people in God’s world.
[00:01:31] And we are very glad to be sponsored and funded and everything else by Moore College, which is where I’m speaking to you—from an interview room here at Moore College in Sydney. And sitting across the uh, desk from me at the other microphone is Caroline Spencer. Hello, Caroline!
[00:01:46] Caroline Spencer: Hi, Tony.
[00:01:46] TP: It’s nice to see you again. I’ve known Caroline for a long time, although we haven’t spoken as much in recent times. And so, partly to remind me of all the things you’re currently doing and to tell our listeners, tell us about who you are and what you’re currently up to.
[00:02:01] CS: Hmm. Thanks Tony. Yes. I have one job. Actually, no, I’ve got three jobs, but you’d probably define it as one job, one side hustle, and one side hustle on the side hustle.
[00:02:12] So the one job is I work four days a week at city Bible Forum as an evangelist, a mentor, a trainer; I work one day a week at my local church as an Associate Pastor; and then I also run a pastoral supervision business. So pastoral supervision helps ministry workers reflect on their practice to get better at it for their sake, but also for the sake of the people that they seek to serve.
Origins of the book
[00:02:37] TP: Oh, that’s interesting. So it’s perhaps in connection with that final side side hustle of yours that we’re talking about a book that you’ve written that’s recently been published by Matthias Media called Getting Over Yourself. I love this title. I’ll come back to that. Getting Over Yourself: Developing a healthy self-reflection habit to serve those around you. So in your supervision work, I guess that’s partly what you are doing.
[00:03:00] But the origins of the book go back further than that. Tell us how you came to write this book.
[00:03:04] CS: Yes. I can answer that from, I guess, two perspectives. The first is, how did I get into reflection? And then the second bit is, how did the book come about? So if we start with my own journey in self-reflection, I’d have to say that I’m not naturally self-reflective.
[00:03:21] TP: Me neither.
[00:03:22] CS: Until, until I had to learn to be, basically. And I had a few challenging work experiences, and it took me a while to actually reflect, because I was a bit scared of what I would discover about myself—that there was something really, really wrong with me.
[00:03:39] But it got to the point where I was quite stuck in my head. And so, I ended up seeing a psychologist. And that was really helpful to get me out of my head and to be able to get into a better head space. And what I learned as I reflect back on that experience is just how complex life and relationships are. Even when we’ve got really good intentions and my heart’s desire is to be more like Jesus, but it’s complicated.
[00:04:08] TP: Things are messy, aren’t they?
[00:04:09] CS: They are. And the other thing I realised is that when I’m worried or disturbed or stressed or anxious about something, my thinking process isn’t necessarily that great. I don’t think as clearly as I could. And so, it got me curious about how do I think better? And thinking better developed into, okay, what does a healthy self-reflection habit look like? So initially it started because of my own wellbeing and resilience. But it very quickly became an opportunity that I could see to learn about myself and how I could grow and change and be more like Jesus.
[00:04:54] So that was happening for me in my personal life. And then I had an opportunity to work with one of the lecturers here at Moore College as they introduced a subject for the students—a new one called “Intentional Ministry Reflection”.
[00:05:09] So working with him, setting that subject up, and then he very kindly gave me the opportunity to write the textbook. I wanted to write a textbook that wasn’t this academic book that would just stay dusty on someone’s shelf. I wanted to write a book that people would use and find really helpful. Not to say that academic books aren’t helpful! I think I wanted to write one that was quite practical. And so that’s the book that’s actually been published now.
[00:05:38] TP: I think you’ve succeeded. It certainly doesn’t read like a dry, dusty tome at all. And although, as you say, the genesis of the book is helping people training for ministry to think about themselves better—to think better about their reactions to things, think better about how they deal with things and so on, and we’ll talk about this in a second, I suspect that as we go on and talk about what the book’s about and how it models this process, I think our listeners will find that it’s a very universally applicable model. It’s not just for people in ministry. But we’ll come back to that a little bit later.
What is self-reflection?
[00:06:09] TP:Let’s start at the basic level. You’ve already kind of started to flesh this out, but I’ll ask the obvious question. What do you mean by self-reflection?
[00:06:16] CS: Yes, that’s a really good question. It makes me realise how we have definitions in our own heads.
[00:06:22] And it’s only once we actually unpack what they are—yeah. So when I talk about self-reflection, I’m not saying those thoughts that we have: “Oh, what just happened there?” I’m talking about an activity that is deliberate and structured and disciplined, where we reflect on a past experience or an ongoing experience, and we are looking, I guess you could say, for opportunities to grow.
[00:06:48] And when we see those opportunities—when we change, put those things into practice—we can actually live life more in tune with our principles and values, which, for me as a follower of Jesus, is to be more like him.
[00:07:02] TP: Mm mm. So the sceptical response, I guess, to self-reflection and especially people who aren’t particularly reflective, who just like to get on with life is, “Well, surely this is kind of a bit navel-gazey. Can’t we just get on with things, learn from our mistakes, and not get involved in too much kind of trawling over our emotions?” Like, how do you respond to that kind of sceptical reaction to the idea of self-reflection?
[00:07:27] CS: Yes. It’s interesting. I think that’s the pushback that I hear the most. And it’s phrased as “Isn’t self-reflection just self-absorption?” It’s a really good question.
[00:07:40] TP: “Oh, you’re supposed to think about other people, not ourselves.”
[00:07:43] CS: Yeah. And as I’ve thought about it, when we ruminate—and I’ll explain what that is in a minute—that’s when we’re self-absorbed.
[00:07:52] So a healthy self-reflection practice actually avoids rumination. So rumination is when we get into that negative head space when we go over and over our thinking in a kind of a downward spiral. It’s a “Woe is me”—
[00:08:10] TP: I’m really stewing over it.
[00:08:11] CS: Stuck in our heads.
[00:08:12] TP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:08:13] CS: Yeah. That’s when we can become quite self-absorbed, and that’s not good. In fact, if you reflect and you end up ruminating, that’s actually worse for you than if you’d done no reflection at all. So that isn’t self-reflection, just self-absorption. I’d say actually, yeah, it is: it’s a real danger.
[00:08:31] TP: That’s unhealthy self-reflection you are talking about—
[00:08:34] CS: Yeah. Healthy self-reflection is a conscious thinking process that has safeguards to prevent rumination or to short circuit rumination.
Biblical reflectionson self-reflection
[00:08:45] TP: Mm, good. Good. Bible-wise, biblically speaking, how have you kind of located or thought about this whole process with respect to what the Bible says about us and ourselves? Have you kind of lodged this or seen some biblical ideas that have helped you think about it?
[00:09:01] CS: Yeah. I’m just thinking about passages like Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3, which are passages that say, “Don’t be like this.” “Put off this.” “And put on this.” So get rid of anger and malice and bitterness. Put on kindness and compassion, things like that. And I guess I’m making an assumption that to be able to do those things—to change in that way—requires some sort of self-awareness, some sort of self-insight.
[00:09:31] TP: You would’ve thought so.
[00:09:32] CS: Yeah, like I’m getting bitter, you know. There’s a root of bitterness growing in me. I need to do something about that. Oh, I was just angry then.
[00:09:39] TP: Yeah. Why was I angry then? I shouldn’t be angry then, but I was angry then. So as we asked that question, “Why was I angry then? That wasn’t good,” you’re starting to reflect. And you can do that in a good way or a bad way.
[00:09:50] Like in those passages—it’s interesting, in those passages, in one sense, Colossians says, “Set your hearts and minds above.” So set your mind on Christ. The consequence of realising who we are in Jesus and the extraordinary privilege of being united with him, a whole new life with him—all those things—that should lead you to actually then consider your earthly life and how different it needs to be.
[00:10:11] So the “therefore” in Colossians 3 is because there’s a whole new possibility and life that you now live, therefore, well, how are you living now? And it’s impossible to put that into practice without considering yourself and saying, “I really need to put to death the impatience that I seem to display all the time. Why is that?”
[00:10:30] CS: Yes. It’s interesting. I read those passages and I kind of go, “Yeah, okay, that’s straightforward. Yeah.” But life is complex and I’m complex. Like I can share an example of frustration, for example. Which frustration, anger, you know—kind of heading down that same trajectory. I was in a conversation with my brother and he was telling me about his new girlfriend. And so my question was, “So what have you learned from your previous relationship that you’re going to take into this new one?”
[00:11:01] Which, you know, fairly decent question to ask. But very soon, it became a, “Yeah, but have you thought about this? And what about this?” And so I could sense that I was getting a bit frustrated. And it’s fascinating: I’m the older sister. I think I should tell my younger brother how to live his life.
[00:11:20] TP: That’s your job. After all, you’re an older sister!
[00:11:22] CS: Yeah. And it’s come from a family pattern. And so, I find it quite challenging to show up differently in conversations with my brother. I know that I shouldn’t, you know, frustration, anger—
[00:11:34] TP: Bossing him around and trying to tell him what to do.
[00:11:36] CS: Yeah.
[00:11:37] TP: But it’s funny how my mind runs in that rut and I just start doing it. Why am I doing that? That part of me I’d like to put to death and put on a different kind of thing.
[00:11:45] CS: Yes. Because I don’t want to be frustrated.
[00:11:47] TP: It’s not good for him and it’s not good for him, is it.
[00:11:49] CS: Not good for me. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:50] TP: Yeah, excellent. It also makes me think of passages in the Bible that talk about testing yourself—examining yourself. I read your book and I was thinking about it. Made me think of that old Martyn Lloyd-Jones quote, and I went and chased it up, because I couldn’t quite get it right. He says in his book on spiritual depression, “Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” And he goes on to quote the psalmist, who says, “Why aren’t thou downcast, oh my soul? Instead, you should turn to God.”
[00:12:21] There’s a presupposition there that we are aware of ourselves and we reflect back on ourselves and say, “Why am I like this, Oh my soul? Something’s wrong here. I should be directing somewhere else.” So the sense of healthy self-awareness, I think, is there in a number of places in Scripture. So this is not just a bit of modern pop psychology psychobabble, after all; it’s what the Bible prompts us to do in thinking about ourselves.
[00:12:44] So if we’re happy that healthy self-reflection is a good thing—examining and thinking about your responses and so on—you’ve come up, as you said, with a process, or you’ve tried to think through “What would be a healthy, structured way of doing that that doesn’t get stuck in self-absorption?” Tell us briefly what that is. What is that structured kind of way of thinking or process?
[00:13:04] CS: Yeah, so in the model, and the book is mostly just the model with some examples to show you what it means, there are four steps. The first is describing what’s happened.
[00:13:16] So that’s kind of zooming in on your experience and then zooming out. What can I learn here? And the idea is to keep it really concrete, because the more concrete it is, the less chance of rumination. So who said what and when? What did I feel? What was the emotion? Things like that.
[00:13:35] TP: It’s observing closely what actually happened and thinking about that.
[00:13:39] CS: Yeah. Yeah, almost like a video frame by frame. Which sounds like a lot of work, but slowing our thinking process down is actually really helpful.
[00:13:48] So that’s the first step. The second step is explore, and that’s all about thinking a bit more what was going on for you. So there are some helpful questions in the model to ask yourself. What was important to me here? What have I assumed about the other parties? Is there something about me that would make relating to me harder? Just things like that to try and give us a little bit of a different perspective, a little bit of a different lens. And also because at the end of the day, we’re responsible for our own lives and we can only change ourselves.
[00:14:25] TP: So there’s describing and observing what actually happened. Then exploring kind of what was going on in my head and heart when that was happening—trying to think about that. And then there’s Step 3, which is?
[00:14:36] CS: Step 3 is assess. So you are looking at opportunities for growth. If that’s what happened, and you’ve got a sense of what was going on for you, it’s, like, well, where is the opportunity for growth here? And Scripture, the Bible, would be our benchmark for that, because the Bible tells us how God wants us to be in relationships.
[00:14:56] The last bit of that step is to see the good, because when we see the good, that’s what stops us from ruminating. So for example, we might go, “Oh, God wants me to be like this, and I was like that and therefore, you know, I feel really flat and deflated. I’m a failure” kind of thing. Which is very ruminate-y. If that’s a word. Rumination. Seeing the good is not about what was good in me or what I’ve done, but seeing the goodness and graciousness of God, because we live in his world. He’s in control, he cares, and he’s committed to making us more like Jesus. So there will be good that we can see. And so, seeing the good is what short-circuits rumination.
[00:15:43] TP: Do you mean seeing the good in the sense of here’s something I can work towards, or there’s some good to take action towards? There’s some good to retrieve from this situation I was in. Is that this whole thing you mean?
[00:15:55] CS: Yeah. All those things. And I can give an example in a little bit. But I’ll just finish the process. So the fourth step is enact: what do we want to put into practice? Because self-reflection, it’s not just about growing in your self-awareness, arriving at some self-insight; it actually should lead to change. So the enact stage is, “Well, what am I going to do differently moving forward? What do I need to do to finish this experience?” Well, that sort of thing.
[00:16:26] TP: Okay, that makes sense to me. So instead of getting stuck in a spiral of self-absorption, you come out of that—of exploring what’s going on for you—into, okay, what can change? What are the possibilities? And then what do I need to actually do to make some progress?
[Music]
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[00:18:15] TP: And now, let’s get back to our program.
Personal values
[00:18:17] TP: Now in the book, as part of the process, and I think it’s in the third stage, you talk about personal values and I found that a very interesting concept, the way you tease that out. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
[00:18:27] CS: Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting. So personal values are what’s important to you. And the secular world uses them in self-reflection. because the idea is you want to live life in tune with your values.
[00:18:42] TP: With your values.
[00:18:42] CS: Yeah. So you work out what’s important to you, because it can differ person to person. I was thinking actually that could be quite useful. If I’m trying to think about what’s important to me when I’m exploring what’s going on for me, thinking a bit further about that can be really helpful, because then I can go, “Okay, that’s something about me and it’s obviously important to me, driving my behaviour.” And what should that look like if it was biblically shaped and informed.
[00:19:17] TP: So not just personal, but biblical as a value. Yeah.
[00:19:19] CS: Yeah. So personal values, there could be a whole range of different things, and I can give you an example of what that would look like, if you want. And in the context of how I avoided some rumination.
[00:19:35] So it was interesting, one Sunday afternoon, I found myself quite deflated. I’d been to a church meeting a couple of hours before, and I kept stewing on it. And then I thought, “Oh, oh, oh, I know what I need to do. I’m ruminating. I’m heading towards that. I need to stop and see the good.” And so I reflected a bit more, and I worked out that I was feeling deflated because someone in that group had misunderstood my position on something. That doesn’t sound that significant.
[00:20:09] TP: So they misunderstood.
[00:20:11] CS: I know. But for me, I value clarity and being understood. And so that was actually causing me to go into a little bit of a negative downward spiral.
[00:20:24] TP: Because that expectation and quite strong personal value, in a sense—what you really—that had been frustrated in that circumstance. Yeah.
[00:20:31] CS: Yeah. And so, then I was actually able to stop and think, “Okay, where is the good?” So I stopped and I thought, and I thought, “Actually, if I think back on that meeting, no: not everyone misunderstood my position.” I thought, “Well, that was God’s kindness.” You know? There were people there that understood me.
[00:20:48] TP: Amazingly, people understood me. Yeah, that’s right.
[00:20:51] CS: The other thing I realised was that, actually, this is a really good learning opportunity for me, because it’s helping me to see how important clarity and being understood is to me.
[00:21:05] Now, those things are really good when it comes to serving others. If I’m clear and I’m understood, that’s actually a way I can serve others. But it can also be something that turns a bit inward into me and starts to be a measure of how I value myself. And that’s actually what was happening in this situation.
[00:21:23] TP: In a sense, you’re saying you can overvalue that thing, and it becomes a bit dysfunctional as a result. Looms too large in your mind. And so when that gets frustrated, as it inevitably will, because the world as we know is full of idiots who won’t understand you, you know?
[00:21:39] CS: True.
[00:21:40] TP: You could—well, true, but maybe I’m exposing some of my personal ideas there. But being able to reflect and identify that about me: “Hey, it’s interesting. That really matters to me.” “Hmm, maybe matters to me almost too much.” And I need to sort of step out of that a little bit and think how could I rethink that whole situation and maybe not be quite so bothered about it?
[00:21:59] CS: Yes. And then the third bit I realised as I was thinking about that is, see, I automatically went, “Oh, my failure.” My failure was this one person that misunderstood my position. Actually, that wasn’t my failure. My failure to call it a failure was actually using clarity and being understood as a measure of my value, rather than finding that in Jesus. That’s actually what I needed to repent of. And so, being able to kind of repent of that—
[00:22:32] TP: That was my mistake, not the fact that I wasn’t supremely understood by every single person in the room.
[00:22:38] CS: So that was really helpful. And I was able to then move on, because God’s grace is big enough to hold that failure.
[00:22:46] TP: That’s really interesting, Caroline, and I found as I looked through the book, at the back of it, there’s an appendix, I think, or an extra section; I don’t know if it’s actually an appendix, but a later section where you listen a whole lot of these kinds of personal values. I found that quite striking. There was lots of them. Nearly all of them are things you say in and of themselves potentially quite a good thing. Things that are worth valuing.
[00:23:09] But interesting how, if there are some of them—just because we’re different people with different backgrounds, we’ve been shaped in different ways—some of them really loom large for us and are very important to us, perhaps too important to us. So that kind of inventory of the kinds of things you might find that, in your own sense of who you are, you value maybe too highly: I thought that almost to me was worth the price of the book. I actually, I was given a free sample copy, so it was worth a lot more than the price of the book, because that was really useful.
Self-awareness for leadership and ministry
[00:23:37] TP: Okay. I understand what you’re saying about personal values. This is all very good, and I can see how in training people for ministry, this would be hugely important, right? How is it particularly applicable and important when you were sort of working with trainee ministers in that Moore College course? How is it helpful there, do you think?
[00:23:55] CS: Well, I just think self-awareness is really important for leadership. The more self-aware you are, the better. But I also think actually, no; it’s good for all relationships. Whether or not you’re a leader, having self-awareness, and by that, I mean self-insight and also self-management, because it’s not about knowing something about yourself; it’s actually about putting those insights into—
[00:24:21] TP: It finishes in enact, doesn’t it? That’s the fourth stage: making change. Yes.
[00:24:26] CS: Yeah. That is really good for us and for our relationships and helps us to be more like Jesus, and gives more space for other people to grow and be more like Jesus.
[00:24:38] TP: It’s so true, isn’t it? When you think back about the different leaders, whether in a secular context or any sort of leadership context, or in a Christian leadership context, the leader that does lack that self-awareness—it’s not even so much that it’s unforgivable for a leader to make a mistake, because we all make mistakes.
[00:24:52] Or to behave poorly, or to get frustrated, or to misread a situation, or whatever it might be. All leaders will do that. But where there’s a lack of an ability to self-reflect and think about and acknowledge and come to understand that you’ve made a mistake here or that you haven’t understood, where there’s that lack of awareness, it kind of takes the whole thing to a different level of dysfunction, doesn’t it? because it’s so hard to know what to do next.
[00:25:14] CS: Yeah. It was interesting, I was talking to someone at church, and they work in the corporate world. And they were talking about someone they’d come across with a leader quite high up. And in meetings, what he’d do is he’d go, “Okay, this is my position on something. Blah. Okay, what does everyone else think?” Right? Yeah. And he had no self-awareness that that shut down any legitimate thinking. because you’re not going to take on—
[00:25:40] TP:—the CEO, the big boss. Put like that, it’s just very bad leadership, because you want a team to contribute. And he probably—if you asked him, he’d probably say, “Yeah, of course I want my team to contribute. But they’re hopeless. They never contribute anything. They just—I’m so frustrated. I give them an opportunity to speak, and they just nod and agree with me, and there’s never any robust discussion. What on earth’s wrong with them?” But if he’d healthily self-reflected, he might think, “Actually, maybe the problem is with me and how I’m setting things up.”
[00:26:10] TP: Indeed. And you can see in leadership, that’s so important—this kind of self-awareness.
Self-reflection in everyday life
[00:26:10] TP: Where do you think it lands in everyday life for us as Christians? What are the kind of spheres or situations in which this kind of healthy self-reflection is really valuable?
[00:26:23] CS: Yeah. It’s good to self-reflect on something that bothers you.
[00:26:28] TP: So dear listener, if there’s anything in your life at any point that is bothering you, and I can guarantee there is, this is why this is useful. But sorry, go on.
[00:26:37] CS: Yeah, well that’s what I was going to say. And “bother” might be you’re worried or you’re upset about something, you’re anxious. Could be a whole range of intensity. But yeah, I just think of it as something that bothers me.
[00:26:49] TP: Yeah, that’s a good way to think about it. And we all experience that so much. And you probably can’t pause and healthily self-reflect about every single thing that bothers you. In your own sort of use of this model and thinking about this, how do you work out something that’s worth a healthy, structured self-reflection on? And you can’t do that about every issue that bothers you in the world.
[00:27:09] CS: No. That’s a really good point. So it’s something that bothers you and also something that you’re curious about. Because the curiosity will help carry you through the hard work of self-reflection.
[00:27:22] TP: Actually, because it does sound like a process.
[00:27:25] CS: It is, yeah.
[00:27:25] TP: It’s something you have to sit down and work through and take time to think about. And not just at one moment, but possibly over several days, coming back to something and thinking about it over a little while.
[00:27:37] CS: And it’s interesting what we made the college students do—and what I did initially in the early days of developing a self-reflection habit, was I’d print out the worksheet that’s actually in the book and hand write answers to all the questions, because the research shows that handwriting is better for us than typing. Because handwriting is another reflection process.
[00:28:02] TP: It slows you down a little bit.
[00:28:03] CS: It does, yeah. And so, it would take me an hour—a good hour to work through something that bothered me. But then I found, as I kept doing it, there’s a whole bank of knowledge that just builds up.
[00:28:16] And that’s great. And so, I found I was able to just do that conscious reflection process faster. And now, because I’m so familiar with the process and so familiar with the outcomes, it’s been really helpful to know, “Oh, I know exactly where I need to dip in now. You know, I’m ruminating. Okay, going straight to Step 3.”
[00:28:40] TP: But yes, you’re a little more expert in the process and you’ve done it repeatedly. And that’s the same with anything, isn’t it? You learn a model because a model is sort of like the structured learner steps that you need to go through in order to learn a new practice. But once you learn the practice, you’ll find yourself just almost doing it automatically as time goes along, and perhaps more quickly.
[00:28:59] CS: Yeah. Actually, Tony, something else I’d like to share about how self-reflection has been helpful for me in relationships with others, I think it’s actually helped me to be a better conversation partner, because when you self-reflect, you really need to look closely at your experiences, ask questions.
[00:29:18] TP: What—what is it? Describe. Explore. Okay. So you are being more intentional about actually thinking more carefully about what’s really happening. So when you’re talking to somebody else.
[00:29:28] CS: Yeah. So self-reflection gets me exploring, asking questions, challenging assumptions, things like that. And so, I then find when I’m in conversation with people, I’m a better listener and I ask more questions, rather than making assumptions.
[00:29:44] And when I have an idea or moment of insight, I hold it more lightly. It’s not, “Here’s your solution.” It’s like, “Oh, I wonder whether this is helpful for you.” That sort of thing. So I think it’s actually helped me just be a better conversation partner when I’m talking to people.
[00:30:02] TP: That makes sense, because, in a sense, having a greater self-awareness about the complexity of yourself and thinking about the different motives and how I immediately respond, or how I immediately think about myself, actually on reflection, there might be more going on. When I explore it and think about it, it makes me more aware that that’s like that for everybody. And so, jumping to conclusions and offering quick pat solutions, you’re more likely to explore, to—it’s really useful.
[00:30:26] CS: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because you can listen and have an answer in your head.
[00:30:31] TP: Yeah. And you’re just waiting for a breath—a break—to give them your—to give them your solution.
[00:30:35] CS: Exactly. And we’ve all talked to people and then thought, actually, this is what they’re doing to me.
Conclusion
[00:30:39] TP: Yeah, exactly. Look, this is excellent and thank you so much for the effort and time that goes into writing a book. I know what that’s like and the agony, and I’m sure there’s been numerous times during writing that things have bothered you. You maybe had to do some for healthy self-reflection, as you’ve written. But thank you for doing that. The book is called “Getting Over Yourself”, which I really like as a title, because it sort of pricks the bubble of being precious about it, or being self-absorbed, or this being a navel-gazing exercise, even just in the title.
[00:31:07] But the point the book is making, of course, is that’s not what it’s about. You don’t get past things and grow by ignoring them, or just by giving yourself a quick uppercut and saying, “Don’t be so stupid. Be better.” But by taking the prayerful time to think about things—think about the situation and about yourself and about how things could grow.
[00:31:28] Thank you so much. Because I guess the end result of this, as it says in a subtitle, which is this kind of self-reflection habit—getting used to doing this—enables you to serve those around you. And ultimately that’s our goal. It’s to love God and love our neighbours. And so thanks for giving us a resource to help us do that.
[00:31:46] CS: Thanks, Tony.
[00:31:46] TP: Oh, thanks Caroline. Thanks for being with us and thanks for being with us on another episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast. It’s been great having you with us.
[00:31:54] And if you have any questions that you’d like to pose about this episode or any recent episode, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Just send us an email at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being with us once again, and we’ll see you next time. ‘Bye for now.
[Music]
[00:32:24] TP: Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living Podcast from Moore College. For a whole lot more from the Centre for Christian Living, just head over to the CCL website at ccl.moore.edu.au where you’ll find a stack of resources, including every past podcast episode all the way back to 2017, videos from our live events and articles that we’ve published through the Centre.
[00:32:49] And while you’re there on the website, we also have an opportunity for you to make a tax deductible donation to support the ongoing work of the Centre here at Moore College.
[00:32:59] We’d also love you to subscribe to the podcast and to leave a review so that people can discover our podcast and our other resources. And we always love and benefit from receiving your feedback and questions. Please get in touch. You can email us at [email protected].
[00:33:18] Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and editing and producing this podcast; to James West for the music; and to you, dear listeners, for joining us each week.
[00:33:32] Thank you for listening. I’m Tony Payne. ‘Bye for now.
Photo by Karl Solano on Unsplash
