People grow and learn every day.  However it is most definitely a choice.  For every person who makes the decision to continue the journey of and toward growth and maturity, there is a group of people who refuse to be moved, changed or altered.  Not the best choice but a conscious one for sure.  There are those who will disagree with me and say that life didn’t provide a choice for them and that they are simply living or handling the cards dealt to them and again, I say to that group it is a choice.  That’s a choice.

For every card dealt, for every situation encountered, one can change the outcome based on the way he or she handles, mishandles, address or ignores the situation.  One of the best ways to handle situations is to be reflective.  Generally life is set of patterns created by behavior.  A person will continue to act and react to situations based on his or her beliefs, ideas, concepts and thoughts.  Those things don’t just change, they don’t just become different.  A person has to work, change and actively decide to change the patterns of life by turning what could be a detrimental pattern into a productive one.  To do that requires reflection.

Reflections aren’t the same thing as a re-enactment of events or “venting” about the things that one has encountered in life; you know describing all the times one was wronged.  Reflections are done in peace, out of desperation; reflections are best when the person reflecting is desperate for change in the dynamics of his or her life.

Reflections include the quietness of discovering beyond the “why me” to the what, how and more importantly what was gained from the experience of things suffered or encountered.  Reflective people learn something that non-reflective people never gain, a sense of appreciation for the inflictions of life, lessons learned and gained; and that despite how painful, not everything one ‘goes through’  is meant to destroy, some build.

Reflections are powerful and reflective people are empowered.