Best 23 Self-Assessments and Self-Reflection Exercises

Best 23 Self-Assessments and Self-Reflection Exercises

Self-assessments and self-reflection exercises are key components of any good personal development plan. By regularly assessing your progress and reflecting on your successes and failures, you can gain valuable insights into your behavior and motivations. This self-knowledge can then be used to set realistic goals, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary changes in your life.

We all know the importance of self-reflection and assessment to maintain a healthy lifestyle and grow as individuals. However, many of us don't dedicate enough time to effectively engage in these activities. This blog post will provide some tips on how to get started with self-assessments and self-reflection exercises. These techniques can help you gain valuable insights into your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So let's get started!

What are Self-assessments and Self-Reflection Exercises

Self-assessments and self-reflection exercises are important parts of personal growth and development. Taking some time to analyze what we have done, thought, or said with an open, honest perspective, allows us to get an overall view of our actions. 

Self-assessment can help us understand where we are in our current situation and how far we have come since then. It allows us to map out our journey and challenge ourselves to make improvements. 

Furthermore, self-reflection can provide valuable insight into the thoughts that lead one to their present point in life. Self-reflection allows people to assess if they are thinking positively or heading in a negative direction toward a goal. With this understanding comes awareness of one's beliefs and attitudes – this provides the building blocks for achieving any desired outcome. 

Self-Assessments and Self-Reflection Exercises

Self-assessments and self-reflection exercises are important tools for personal growth and professional development. They can help identify strengths and areas for improvement, support personal goals, boost motivation, and provide a greater understanding of oneself. Self-assessment is often done by taking an inventory or questionnaire about one's achievements in both their personal life and career. 

It also involves looking at past successes, and mistakes, recognizing patterns in habits or choices, setting new goals, and learning from mistakes. Self-reflection is a more introspective approach to assessing oneself. 

It considers how the person’s behavior has changed over time, how certain decisions have impacted their life, and how emotions affect thinking, behaviors, and responses to people and events. Below is a list of 23 self-assessments and self-reflection exercises.

1. To reflect on a project or process, ask yourself: 

• What have I learned about how my organization works?
• What barriers did I overcome? 
• What will I do differently next time?
• What do I know now that I didn’t know then? How did I acquire that knowledge?
• What do I need to do today to make this learning concrete?  

2. To reflect on “where you are,” ask yourself

• What’s important to me?
• How has what’s important to me changed in the past year? Five years? 
• How am I aligning my actions with what’s important to me?
• What’s difficult about it?
• What actions can I take today to find more alignment? 

3. To reflect on a mistake (a rash decision you made, an offensive thing you said, a clear oversight in your judgment), ask yourself

• From the perspective of three other people, what happened here? How might I have been perceived by those people?
• What will I do differently next time? Whose help do I need to make that happen? 
• What’s the new entry I’ll now add to my failure resume?
• With whom do I need to share my learning to maintain strong relationships in the future? 

4. To reflect on an article you’ve read, a quote that speaks to you, or a talk you attended, ask yourself

• Why are the ideas I’ve learned here so compelling to me? 
• How am I currently living out the ideas expressed here? 
• What might I do differently? 
• What might it feel like to make this my mantra? 
• What actions do I want to take next? 

5. To reflect when you’re feeling disengaged, antsy, uninspired, or just “blah,” ask yourself

• What are all of the things I’m feeling right now?
• What’s going on in life that might be creating these feelings?
• How do these feelings impact me?
• Do I want to let this continue? Why or why not?  
• What kind of support do I need? 
• What are the next three steps I’ll take to move through (not around) these feelings?  

6. Personal Brand Tagline

Time-frame: 5 to 10 minutes

Participants: Any number of participants. This activity is done individually and the results can then be shared with the rest of the class.

Purpose of the Exercise: This is a great marketing, creativity, or self-reflection exercise. This activity can be used for training sessions on copywriting, marketing (including digital marketing), soft skills, and writing CVs. It can be quite a versatile tool.

Activity Instructions

1. Provide participants with a pen and paper if they do not already have them.

2. Ask participants to write a tagline as a tweet, using only 140 characters to promote themselves.

3. Share with the rest of the class and discuss.

Benefits of this Activity

• This is a good exercise to help participants focus on the essentials and on what is important.
• The results can be funny, so this may be a useful activity to lighten the mood.

7. Personal Shield of Honour

Activity Time-frame: 15 to 20 minutes.

Number of Participants: 

Put participants into groups of 4 to 8 people.

Purpose of this activity: This activity is perfect for Reflection and discussion.

The aim is to focus on what is done well at their workplace, as well as on what could be improved.

Activity Instructions

You will need:

• A1 piece of paper
• Writing implements such as pens, markers, and crayons
• Possibly even a magazine and scissors

1. Explain that each group will create a ‘shield’ out of a big piece of paper.

2. Each group will need to divide its shield into 4 quadrants, each containing the following elements:

• Quadrant 1: What skills and abilities do you bring to the workplace
• Quadrant 2: What skills and abilities do you need to improve upon in the workplace
• Quadrant 3: What frustrates you about our workplace
• Quadrant 4: What is a source of pride at your workplace

3. Ask the groups to use only images, photos, drawings, and graphics. No words are allowed.

4. Give them 10 minutes to create their shield.

5. Give every group the chance to share their results by asking them to present their shield to the rest of the class. Allow 1 to 2 minutes for each presentation.

The Benefits of this activity

• By promoting discussion, this exercise stimulates deep learning.
• This activity engages visual and kinaesthetic learning styles.

8. The ‘Response Cards Activity

Time-frame: From 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the number of questions you want to ask.

Number of Participants: Any number, in groups of 4 to 6 people.

Activity Purpose: This is a revision, reflection, and discovery activity. It’s an interesting alternative to asking questions to participants with the trainer writing the answers on a flip chart.

Unlike the flip-chart activity, this activity gives everyone the chance to answer.

Activity Instructions

1. Ask an open-ended question and ask each participant to write their answer on a card. Give them a suitable time