I came across another really good book the other day, called "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living" by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. The book is essentially a daily devotional reader and includes passages from some of the great Stoic writers and philosophers of antiquity (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, among others). The last several passages have all been about self-reflection, which I have really enjoyed. I think self-reflection is an excellent habit for leaders to establish and develop. Harry M. Kraemer recently wrote an online article for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, "How self-reflection can make you a better leader". In the article, Kraemer suggests that leaders spend 15 minutes at the end of every day asking themselves the following questions:
1. What did I say I was going to do today in all dimensions of my life?
2. What did I actually do today?
3. What am I proud of?
4. What am I not proud of?
5. How did I lead people?
6. How did I follow people?
7. If I lived today over again, what would I have done differently?
8. If I have tomorrow (and I am acutely aware that some day I won't), based on what I learned today, what will I do tomorrow in all dimensions of my life?
I was struck by how similar these daily self-reflection type of questions were to what Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus asked themselves in ancient Rome! So I thought to myself, maybe there is something here that I should be doing in my own life! While I do not have a perfect track record so far (I just started doing this), I did start to sit down at the end of the day and ask myself a few of these questions, and I have found the exercise to be really useful and worthwhile.
I will finish with a quote from Kraemer's article - "The reason many, many people have trouble balancing their lives is that they have not been self-reflective enough to figure out what they are trying to balance." Great advice for me.
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