Tools · · Updated
The Power of Reflection: Sitting with the After Experience
A few quiet minutes after a conversation, an event, or a workday tell you more than the event itself.
Greg Murray, Founder, Human Creative Coaching
In short
The "after experience" is how you feel once an interaction or activity ends. Sitting with it for a few minutes, and asking a handful of honest questions, shows you which people and activities nourish you and which drain you. Over weeks, patterns emerge, and those patterns are the best data you have for deciding where your time and energy go.
In this piece
Watch the video: How did that leave you?
We often rush from one task to the next without stopping to reflect on our experiences. Whether it's time with a friend, an event, or a workday, taking a moment to reflect can show you what nurtures your well-being and what doesn't.
By sitting with the "after experience," we can filter out what's unhelpful, make better choices for ourselves, and build a life rich in positive, meaningful experiences.
Sitting with the after experience means taking a few quiet minutes once something ends to notice what it left you with, and letting that pattern decide where your time and energy go next.
Why does reflection matter?
Barry Zimmerman's work on self-regulated learning places reflection at the center of how people improve: after acting, we evaluate what happened and adjust.9 That loop builds self-awareness, helping us understand our emotions and reactions, and it strengthens emotional regulation, so we process what we feel instead of carrying it.
Neuroscience adds a detail. Simply putting a feeling into words engages the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for planning and evaluating, and quiets the amygdala's alarm response.6 Naming what an experience did to you is itself regulating.
The clearest workplace test comes from a tech support call center at Wipro in Bangalore. New hires in training who spent the last 15 minutes of each day writing about what they had learned scored 22.8 percent higher on the final assessment than colleagues who simply kept working; those who also spent five minutes explaining their notes to a peer did slightly better again.2 Fifteen minutes of looking back beat fifteen more minutes of doing.
Regular reflection creates space for intentional growth, better well-being, and better decisions.
What does one percent do?
Small, incremental changes add up. The aggregation of marginal gains, small consistent improvements compounded over days, months, and years, leads to substantial transformation.1 Improve by just one percent a day and the curve bends. This applies to your emotional life, your relationships, and your work.
It's not about massive leaps. It's about steady, consistent progress.
What are the after-experience questions?
To use reflection well, pause after an interaction or activity and notice how it left you. You don't need every question; pick the ones that fit.
The energizing and optimistic questions matter more than they look. Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory shows that positive emotions widen attention and build lasting resources: relationships, skills, resilience.5 The experiences that leave you open are the ones building your future.
How do you run the process?
- Sit with it. A few minutes after an interaction, event, or workday, sit quietly and observe how you feel.
- Ask. Use the questions above as a guide.
- Find the patterns. Over time you'll see which experiences consistently leave you energized and which don't. Patterns are how you decide who gets your time and what gets your energy.
- Choose. Prioritize what nourishes you and filter what drains you.
Isn't this just overthinking?
It can turn into that, which is why the questions above ask what an experience did, not why you are the way you are. Psychologists Paul Trapnell and Jennifer Campbell separated two kinds of self-attention: reflection, driven by curiosity, and rumination, driven by threat and replaying what went wrong. Reflection tracked with openness; rumination tracked with neuroticism and distress.8 Same inward look, opposite motive.
The honest limit: putting experiences into words helps, but less than the enthusiasm suggests. A meta-analysis of 146 randomized studies of expressive writing found a real but small average effect (r = .075).4 A few minutes of reflection will not fix a draining job or a one-sided friendship. What it does is make the pattern visible, so the decision is yours to make on purpose.
- Keep it short. Five to fifteen minutes, then stop. Rumination has no end time.
- Ask what, not why. "What did that leave me with?" moves you forward; "Why am I like this?" tends to circle.
- End on a choice. One thing you will do more of, or less of, because of what you noticed.
Why celebrate, too?
Reflection often focuses on growth areas, but it's equally important to celebrate your successes. Small wins engage the brain's reward system, reinforcing the behaviors that produced them.7 Gratitude practice, counting what went right, is linked to better mood and well-being.3 Celebrating with others amplifies both.
Closing
Sitting with the after experience means taking a few quiet minutes once something ends to notice what it left you with, and letting that pattern decide where your time and energy go next. It is how you filter out the unhelpful, focus on what nourishes you, and make more informed choices.
In CORE this is Reality: holding the good and the hard in one frame, without talking yourself out of either. If what keeps showing up is a person who drains you, the free Boundary Map is a six-minute way to see where your lines sit. And if you want people around you who will ask the after-experience questions with you, that is what the Co-Hort is for.
Take a moment to reflect on something recent. What did it leave you with, and what will you do with that?
Questions I hear
What is the "after experience"?
The feelings and insights you have once an interaction or activity ends. Reflecting on it tells you what nourishes your well-being and what does not.
What is the difference between reflection and rumination?
Reflection is curious and has an end: you notice what happened and decide what to do. Rumination is driven by threat and replays the same moment. Research separates the two, linking reflection to openness and rumination to distress. Keep it short and ask what, not why.
Does reflecting at the end of the day actually improve performance?
In a field experiment at a Wipro call center, trainees who spent the last 15 minutes of each day reflecting in writing scored 22.8 percent higher on their final assessment than trainees who kept working.
How does reflection improve decision-making?
Naming what you felt engages the evaluating parts of the brain and calms the reactive ones. Over time, reflection surfaces patterns you can act on.
How can I make reflection a daily habit?
Set aside a few minutes at the end of the day. Use two or three of the after-experience questions. A short journal entry helps you stay consistent and see patterns.
Why celebrate success?
Celebration engages the brain's reward system and reinforces the behaviors that got you there. It also builds gratitude, which is tied to well-being.
How do small improvements lead to significant change?
They compound. A one percent improvement each day, sustained, produces far more than occasional large efforts.
References
- Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery.
- Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G. P., & Staats, B. R. (2014). Learning by thinking: How reflection can spur progress along the learning curve (Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 14-093). Source
- Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. DOI
- Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865. DOI
- Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1367–1377. DOI
- Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. DOI
- Schultz, W. (2006). Behavioral theories and the neurophysiology of reward. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 87–115. DOI
- Trapnell, P. D., & Campbell, J. D. (1999). Private self-consciousness and the five-factor model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(2), 284–304. DOI
- Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70. DOI
This article is written from a coaching perspective and is for general information. It is not psychotherapy, counseling, or medical advice, and it is not a substitute for care from a licensed professional.
Greg Murray · TPRAT certified, TLP Director, TPRAT co-facilitator. Coach to founders, executives, and artists. Writes here about what actually changes a person.
