Creative Coaching for Musicians

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S3 E55: Simple Reflection Practices to Support Your Creativity + Life

Rebecca Hass

Reflection is an essential part of tapping into your creativity - slowing down is the only way to hear your own inner voice, and what you really desire. In the midst of your busy life, it’s easy not to make time for it, but your reflection practice can be as simple or complex as it needs to be!

I share my practices for checking in with myself on a weekly and monthly basis (which are in this free PDF for you), as well as other reflection prompts for creative inspiration.

What are your reflection practices? Tag me on Instagram @rebecca_hass (or send me an email) to share!

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REFLECTION PROMPTS

Weekly check-in:

  1. What worked?

  2. What didn’t work?

  3. What did I learn?

  4. Intentions for next week


  • What does my creative work need from me this month? 

  • What does my business need from me this month? 

  • What does my life need from me this month? 

  • What are your non-negotiables? 

  • What’s on your yes list, and no list?

Prompts for feeling creatively stuck: 

  • Where can you find hope? 

  • Where can you find joy? 

  • Where can you find inspiration? 

  • What feels good to me right now

  • What feels fun and exciting to me right now? 

  • What am I curious about?

Even more prompts:

• Reflection prompts for figuring out which type of rest you need right now (blog post) 

• Prompts for nurturing your relationship with creativity (S3 E5, with PDF)

MORE FROM REBECCA

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 55 of Being a Whole Person. Today, I'm going to talk about reflection, why it's important, how I do it, and how you can make it simple and manageable enough to actually fit into your life. 

But first, I have a couple announcements for you. Number one, my Rise Above the Overwhelm 1-time creative coaching sessions are going to be sliding scale for the rest of January. This is my little New Year gift to you, because I know times are tough here in January 2022. 


So, Rise Above the Overwhelm is a laser-focused 75-minute coaching session with me, and you get a week of email or Voxer support following it, as well as some post-session notes from me with your personalized plan. It is perfect for getting your metaphorical ducks in a row, and figuring out what your plan for something is going to be, mapping out a project, or zeroing in on what's keeping you stuck, finding ways to build momentum to actually move that project forward that you have been wanting to do forever. 

Those are going to be sliding scale from $110-220, which is the normal price, $220. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. You don't have to do the session in January to get this right, you just have to have booked it by the end of January. 

I also have openings for longer packages, for my 1-month or 3-month packages right now. So if you need something a little bit longer than just a 1-time session, I got you covered.

I should also add that if you are wondering about coaching, having a discovery call with me is not the only way to inquire about it. I know a lot of you are just Zoomed out at this point, you can also just send me an email, or you can find me on Voxer. So if you go to the free call page, all of those details are there, and the link will obviously be in the show notes for you. 

Number two, please rate and review the show if you're enjoying it, it is so important in the Apple algorithm to get found if you are a little independent podcast like this one. So every little rating, and review is so helpful, and I'm so appreciative. 

So let's get into talking about reflection. This topic is really on my mind right now, because I typically do a big kind of year end reflection each year, as well as every month and every week in smaller doses. I am still working on my review of 2021, and it's just going slow this year. Winter feels like a good reflection season, and we're also in Mercury retrograde, if you pay attention to astrology, which is known as a time that's great for reflection, review, looking back rather than moving forward. So if you're feeling stuck, and needing to figure out why that is, this is a great time for many reasons to look back and reflect. 

So why is reflection important? Number one, I really think of it as an essential part of the cycle of self care. I define self care as a process as, number one, figuring out what you need, and number two, fulfilling that need. Then we need that essential practice of reflection, to check in with ourselves to really know what it is that we need at any given moment. 

Self care and that energy replenishment is what allows us to also replenish creativity. Because in stressful times, you might feel like your creativity is dried up, or a little bit withered. So coming back to rest, whatever type of rest that may be, things that will replenish you, will replenish your creativity, too. 

Slowing down is really the only way to have that space to actually hear your inner voice, to actually hear what you think, to know what you deeply desire. I know when I was going through many periods of burnout and constant work for months on end, it really felt impossible to even check in with those voices, it was just like, “Okay, eyes forward, keep going, don't stop to rest.” I didn't have time to think about anything other than what the task at hand was. 

I know for me, and possibly for many of you, too, that stopping to reflect might feel like a waste of time, when you have so many other things to do. Or maybe not even a waste of time, but just not as important as doing all of those concrete tasks that need to get done. 


This comes up a lot in Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club. The planning phase of things sometimes feels like it takes too long, like it isn't worth anything, because you haven't fully accomplished anything yet. But really, that planning is such a worthwhile task, because that is what allows you to move forward in an organized way. So while you're in that planning phase, which probably does include some reflecting, you might feel like you're not getting that much done, but really you are paving the way, you're clearing out a path that then you can build upon. 

So if you're thinking, “Yeah, doing more reflection and journaling, and this kind of thing, sounds great, but I just really can't fit it into my life,” I hear you. I have struggled with this over the years, too. 

You can do as much of a reflection practice as works for you. You can do it in a very simple way, you can do it in a more complex way. I know, for me, that when I overcomplicated it, I would just not do it. I would make these lists of many different prompts and questions that I had to answer, and it started to feel like this cumbersome homework assignment that someone else had given me that I didn't want to do anymore. 

The answer for me was to make it just a lot more simple. You also don't have to do reflection with prompts. You could just do some unstructured journaling, and that could also be a short amount of time. But it can be really helpful to have actual prompts, so that you have some direction for what you're doing, especially when you feel like time is limited. 

So I'll start by sharing the weekly check-in questions that I ask myself every week. I actually just write them out right on my planner page. I use digital tools for planning, but I also make my weekly to-do list on paper every week, using the Get to Work Book planner pages. I know some people love the entire planner, but having just the weekly spread page works great for me. I don't put the tasks on the weekend days, so those columns are where I write this out each week, and then I save the pages for the whole year. 

So my first question is, what worked this week? Knowing if things went well. Then, what didn't work this week? What things did not go well. Number three, what did I learn this week? Those might be related to the first two questions, those things might not be. 

Number four, what are my intentions for next week? Sometimes that just includes a feeling like, “I want to feel less busy next week, because I did too many things this week.” Or maybe it's, “I need to prioritize sleep next week, because I'm trying to stay healthy and not get the Omicron variant, whatever it may be. I usually keep it pretty simple, because there are a lot of things that I could say as intentions for next week or tasks for next week. But that's not what this is for, this is just for kind of general feelings, and general intentions. 

If you need some examples, one of mine that comes up fairly often is, maybe I learned that scheduling too many things on one day makes me feel really depleted the next day. This is also how I learned that I was chronically overdoing it every Monday. I would arrive at the beginning of the week, very refreshed from the weekend, and then think, “Oh yeah, I'm gonna do all these things.” I also typically have an evening rehearsal on Monday. So it's really easy for me to just work the entire nine to five workday, and then go to this rehearsal. Then I wake up on Tuesday, and I'm just kind of wiped out, which does not help me pace myself through the week. 

The “what worked” area is also an amazing place for celebration, because many of us do not stop to celebrate our wins often enough, the big ones or the small ones. Especially when you're ambitious and you're doing a lot of things, it can feel like, “I don't have time to stop and think about this. I need to just keep going.” I find it really helpful to have those things listed, so I know I can go back and see, “Wow, I did really do a lot of good stuff in November of last year,” or whatever it is. 

I also love this because I do a monthly review where I collect all of the items from “what did I learn?” Then I have a little list for what I learned in May, or whatever month it is, because I don't know about you, there is no way I would remember all of these things from week to week, let alone month to month, let alone year to year. So it's really nice to be able to kind of look back and compile this stuff, without having to think too hard. 

So for my monthly review, I compile those things, like I said, but I also list out work that I got done, projects that I've moved forward, but maybe they're not done yet. I like to list out things like personal learning and personal projects that don't have to do with work. So I just know, oh, yeah, I was trying to learn embroidery during that month, that's cool. 

I like to list out people that I've connected with, because my word for 2018 was connect, and I found it really fun to look back and see how many more collaborations happened and how many more just fun friend connections happened, because I was focused on that. 

I list any big life events that happen. I like to list fun things that I did, books that I read, concerts that I go to, or art shows that I attend, and just kind of sum up some general feelings of what that month felt like for me. Then, of course, the hopes for the next month as well.

If you want to collect these ideas, I do have free PDFs of both the weekly and the monthly review questions that are kind of worksheet style that you can get for yourself. I also have a few bonus questions that are not on there, such as, moving that “what do you need” question to different areas of my life. Like, what does my creative work need for me this month? What does my business need for me this month? What does my life need from me this month? And you can apply that to any area of your life. And it's really great. 

You can also say, what are your non-negotiables? Like, what do you absolutely need more than anything else? And kind of hierarchically prioritize. Some people also like to make a yes and no list like, these are my yeses going forward, these are my nos. However it sounds good to you, you can do it that way. 

Then here's some fun reflection prompts for anytime that you're feeling kind of stuck, either creatively stuck, or maybe in a different area of your life. I find these really helpful to ask. Where can you find hope? Where can you find joy? Where can you find inspiration? What feels good to me right now, or what feels fun and exciting to me right now? 

Even if you're in this kind of depressed January slump state, look for those little glimmers of excitement, or curiosity. Curiosity will often lead you to all of these things: the hope, joy, and inspiration. 

All of these questions that I just listed out will be printed in the show notes for you. If you want all that stuff in PDF format, let me know - if enough people want that, I'll make one. But for now, the weekly check in questions and the monthly check in questions are available as a free download. So I'll have the link in the show notes for those. 

I'll also point you to a couple other sets of questions that I have asked for reflection. One is about the different types of rest, and figuring out which type of rest you need right now - I have a blog post about that. As well as some questions for questioning laziness and the idea of laziness, to help you look underneath that label of laziness to see how you're really feeling and what you're really needing. I also did an episode about repairing your relationship with creativity or strengthening it back in early season three, and there's a PDF for that one too. So, lots of different types of reflection for you. 

Don't feel like you have to do all of these. Like I said, make it as simple as you need to, but I love providing resources so that what you need is there for you. So I'll leave it at that for today. I hope that this is helpful for you. I'd love to hear some of your answers if you want to share them! 

You can always post about it on Instagram and tag me, @rebecca_hass or you can send me an email, hello@rebeccahass.com. Speaking of Instagram, I made a little screenshot-able template of the weekly check in questions that will be on my Instagram today and saved in my highlights so that you can use that for yourself, if you want to. 

So I hope that you all have a wonderful week, and that you are taking as good of care of yourselves as you're able to in this ever-tumultuous time. I'm always rooting for you in creative projects, and life! See you next week.