Reflective stories are based on experiences that make us think.
There are many different ways an experience can make us think.
- The experience can be a learning experience.
- The experience can be a failure where we reflect on what happened.
- The experience can be a paradigm-shifting experience where we see the world in a new way.
- The experience can be a significant life experience such as the birth of a child
- The experience can be one that disproves a belief
- The experience can simply be a new experience you have never had before
- The story becomes the experience followed by our reflections on the experience.
Writing these in this form is important because the experience part of the story cannot be argued. It is simply a statement of what happened. Having this separate from the reflection allows us to return to what happened as we reflect on the experience.
Oftentimes the two parts of the story become mixed and both the experience and the reflections become muddy.
Remember what you have experienced so that you can continually learn from those experiences.