Self reflection

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Time frame: 15-30 min

Type: Individual Reflection

Facilitation level: Medium

Comfort zone: Safe

Materials: Your own smartphone, journal and pen

The purpose of this exercise is to bring insight from hindsight. Weirdly, now that our phones have cameras, they have become our visual journals with collections of moments, snapshots from our daily lives, mostly the happy ones, which could still remind of the sad ones.

This reflection activity includes using your phone.

  1. Unlock your phone and go to your photos
  2. Close your eyes and scroll back to your past photos 3 times with your finger on the touchscreen…. 1, 2, 3….
  3. Open your eyes to see which moments of your past are now on your screen in front of you
  4. Choose one of those moments/photos that you feel most drawn to, allow a photo to choose you
    [check in with yourself if there is a resistance to certain photos and why? Perhaps there are some hidden ideas about beauty and happiness?]
  5. Save the photo that has chosen you in a new album.
  6. Repeat steps 2-5 a few times to collect a few photos from your past, snapshots of light and shadow in your life.
  7. Open your newly created album. Look at the photos, notice the light and shadow in them. Look at the details, the spectrum of colors.
    Notice what thoughts and feelings are bubbling up? How do they relate to your experience of the past? Make your notes in your journal. 

*In case you don’t use your phone to take photos regularly, you could do a variation of the same activity using your social media feed that you use most often, or a calendar on your wall.