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Want to accelerate your development (and your performance) in 2018? Join Safety on Tap Connected to get me as a coach, learn with a community of amazing peers and educational content you won’t find anywhere else.

 

Hey it’s Andrew here from safetyontap.com

 

This episode is part of my 2017 end of year challenge – I’m committing to give you two weeks solid of advice, reflections and actions for you to maximise what you learn from 2017, and  unleash your greater potential in 2018.  I’m sharing one episode every single day for the two weeks leading up to Christmas, so check out the other episodes numbers 55 through 65.

 

There is no particular order, each one of these will be great on it’s own, but listening to more will give you much greater value.  If you are listening to this at any other time of the year, have no fear! – the best time for you to take action on this is always right now!

 

I need to start by saying that we’ve been tricked.  Tricked into thinking that learning only comes from somewhere else or someone else – I need to learn from a teacher, or my university course, or my parents or my boss or this book or this training course or this article.  Sure you can learn from other things and other people, but we don’t get taught where MOST of our learning comes from!

 

But this is changing.  For most of us, we were part of an education system of this kind of trickery.    But kids these days aren’t, they are luckier than us.

Check out what came in addition to my kids school reports….their personal reflection on their year, what they’ve done well, what has been a challenge, and goals they plan to work on next year.

 

If you are reading this, you can see these little reflections in the free download for this episode by popping your details in the box above this text.

So schools, at least this one, are getting smarter – they’ve realised one of the key missing parts of learning, which is what we learn from ourselves.  And as adults, we are our own best teacher’s because our own life, experiences, challenges & successes are the richest source of learning.  The 702010 model is a good way of explaining this, which I discuss in episode 36 of the podcast.

 

Reflection is one of the core skills we support people to develop inside Safety on Tap Connected.  In fact our onboarding process has an entire lesson dedicated just to teaching reflective practice.  It costs nothing but time, it has a mindfulness kind of focus about it, it forces you to stop your busy work and engage your higher-order cognition….this is seriously powerful stuff.

 

So here’s a few tips to help you be your own best teacher using reflective practice:

– reflective practice is an individual thing, so there isn’t one way to do it

– but, reflective practice works well when it has a familiar structure.  We’ve created a specific reflective practice worksheet for member of SoTC, based on research by Gibbs.  It has a starting point, it has a focus, it involves questioning, it involves analysis, it stimulates sense-making and finally must finish with action – which is your commitment to improve

– reflective practice works best when it is a habit (that’s why it’s called practice), and habits take a while to establish.

– reflective practice is flexible enough to be an individual thing you do on your own, but it works really well as a social learning experience too, in a reflective conversation with someone who you trust.

– reflective practice is not just thinking about stuff.  Reflective practice is thinking, and writing stuff down.  I don’t care whether you think you are an auditory learner or whatever, it’s pretty clear that when you write, you engage a bunch of additional areas in your brain which aid the thinking process, the memory process, and motivation.

 

If you’ve listened to many of my other podcasts or video’s, you will see how pervasive reflection is in what I talk about – because it is just so powerful.  Ep55 talks about a single word or phrase which will guide you in 2018, as opposed to goals or new years resolutions – that requires reflection.  In every interview I do, I offer my reflections on the discussion, along with my own freehand reflection notes plus a reflection template.  In this 10 days of Christmas set of vodcasts, I’ve taken it up a notch by giving you tailored, specific reflective questions in the downloadable worksheets.

 

You are your best teacher! I want you to make reflection a habit in 2018 and beyond, so I want to give you the reflection worksheet members of Safety on Tap Connected use.  Download your free copy, along with the transcript for this episode, in the box above this text.

 

If you want to create the conditions to improve your reflection, and to do it with support of me as your coach and a community of reflective learners, you should consider becoming a member of Safety on Tap Connected.

Check out safetyontap.com/connected, or if you want me to come out in person and help you and your team send me an email andrew@safetyontap.com

 

Making reflective practice a part of your routine will help you uncover some amazing new ways to take positive, effective and rewarding actions to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya!