Like most days, I come home both energized and exhausted from weathering the day's storms. I kiss my wife and hit the shower. While blaring music, I escape the day's events to allow for organic reflective thoughts. This, my reflection time.
Before these few minutes of alone time, I'm pretty much worthless. But now I go downstairs and am ready to have a meaningful conversation. Post-reflection conversations are not nitty-gritty detailed, but rather both holistic and strategic.
After speaking a reflection, with a smirk my wife asks, "when did you think of that?" or "how long have you felt that way?" My answer is often, "In the shower." I'm convinced she now asks for the hell of it - we enjoy humoring each other.
There's something incredibly powerful in speaking what we feel. Often times the words that flow from our mouths are far more clear than the thought that previously rested solely in our mind.
We should not be fearful of voicing our reflections, no matter how far out they may be. The moment we wonder if our partner, family member, or friend perceives our reflection as good or bad is the moment we talk ourselves out of speaking the thought. What if that person loved the thought and had additional insight on clarifying the vision? We'll never know.
We should all be comfortable with speaking our reflections. It may seem weird, but it never hurts to speak our ideas to ourselves. "Wait, you are advocating talking to yourself?" Of course I am. This allows for a valuable "test drive" of the idea in words - one you can clarify on your own before speaking it to someone else.
How do the words feel coming out of your mouth? What came out that you didn't expect? Our brain has a way of interpreting ideas in to words that help give clarity to the idea.
Most importantly, speaking reflections holds me accountable. When I voice a vision, I now work to clarify that vision over time. A thought is an idea, whereas a word sparks action. So when I say I want to be top 20 in the company in 2014, top 10 in 2015, and top 5 in 2016, now it's on me to climb the ladder for the belt.
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