#049 A Simple Reflection Exercise to Find Alignment (5 Minutes)
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Discover why most people never learn to truly reflect—and how this simple yet transformative practice can shift you from being a victim of circumstance to the author of your own life. Amanda Parker shares her personal awakening to reflection and practical tools you can start using today.
This is Episode 3 in a 3-Part Mini Series on Hearing Your Inner Wisdom. Tune in to Episodes #047, #048, and #049 to get the full scoop!
Read the full Show Notes below!
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“When you really start to reflect more deeply... you give yourself the opportunity to make different, better informed or more aligned decisions in the future.”
Today's Guest
Amanda Parker
Amanda Parker is the host of the Don't Step on the Bluebells podcast and an intuitive guide that helps people to deeply trust their inner wisdom, quiet the external noise, and intentionally create a life fully aligned with their true self. She is a Certified Professional Coach (ICF PCC, CPCC) and spiritual guide using a unique blend of shamanic and energy healing practices to support you on your journey towards inner knowing and deep self-trust.
Amanda is a Reiki Master Healer and a member of the UK Reiki Federation, and has trained in psychic mediumship with the College of Psychic Studies and shamanism with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.
Amanda has worked in the field of leadership and personal development since 2017 - supporting clients from organizations such as World Bank Group, World Economic Forum, UNICEF, Zalando, Nestle, and LinkedIn. She previously worked in wildlife conservation with the World Wildlife Fund - supporting projects in forest and wetland protection across South America.
Amanda is a native New Yorker who has been living in London for the last 3.5 years, after over a decade in Berlin, Germany. She now lives in North London with her husband and their two cats, Zaki & Oreo.
How to get in touch:
Website: www.amandaparker.co
Instagram: @amandaparker.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandamparker/
Podcast: www.dontsteponthebluebells.com
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Show Notes
This is Episode 3 in a 3-Part Mini Series on Hearing Your Inner Wisdom. Tune in to Episodes #047, #048, and #049 to get the full scoop!
What if everything you want to change in your life is just one reflective practice away? Most people never learn how to truly reflect, spending years feeling like victims of circumstance while never understanding why. Amanda Parker's breakthrough came in a coach training classroom when she realized that despite journaling her whole life, she had no idea what reflection actually was. It was a jarring awakening that changed everything. Because reflection isn't just a wellness trend—it's the foundational practice that determines whether you live by conscious choice or drift through life on autopilot.
"Without the reflection, you might just feel like a victim, like life is happening to you," Amanda explains. But when you pause to ask yourself deeper questions—What does this feel like? What matters to me? What would I like to be different?—something shifts. You move from passive observer to active creator, gaining clarity to recognize patterns and make better-informed decisions.
Amanda shares three powerful practices: Morning Pages from The Artist's Way (free-writing three pages daily without judgment), pulling an Oracle card with the intention "What do I need to know today?", and walking in nature without distractions. These aren't complicated rituals—they're accessible entry points that rewire how you process your life. When practiced consistently, they move you from surviving to thriving by design.
Ready to stop letting life happen to you and start creating it by choice? Press play and discover the gateway practice that changes everything.
Key Takeaways
Reflection is not instinctive—it's a learned skill. Most people are never taught how to reflect, even though it's foundational to conscious living and making aligned choices.
Without reflection, life feels like it's happening to you rather than through you. Reflection shifts you from victim mentality to active participation in creating your life.
Reflection reveals patterns and clarity. By asking yourself deeper questions about what feels true, what you want more or less of, and what matters to you, you gain the information needed to make better decisions.
Morning Pages practice clears the mental clutter. Writing three pages each morning without judgment—capturing fears, excitement, to-do lists, and everything in between—frees your mind and shows you what you're actually working through.
Oracle cards create a daily reflective touchstone. Asking "What do I need to know today?" and sitting with the message connects you to guidance and helps you see how universal wisdom relates to your specific life.
Nature walks without distraction settle the mind and activate reflection. Walking in nature without podcasts, audiobooks, or phones allows your thoughts to naturally guide you into deeper processing and clarity.
Consistency transforms the practice. Making reflection a regular habit—whether daily journaling, weekly nature walks, or morning card pulls—gradually rewires how you process life and builds stronger intuitive decision-making.
What We Talked About
The Catalyst Moment: Amanda's realization during coach training that despite journaling her whole life, she'd never actually been taught how to reflect.
Why Reflection Matters: Without it, life feels like it's happening to you rather than through you—and you miss the nuance, lessons, and richness of your own life.
Morning Pages Practice: Julia Cameron's technique of writing three pages each morning without editing or judgment to reveal your inner dialogue, fears, dreams, and what you're truly processing.
Oracle Cards for Daily Reflection: Pulling a card each morning with "What do I need to know today?" as a way to access intuitive guidance and reflect on how universal messages apply to your life.
Nature Walks as Reflection: Taking 20-30 minute walks without distractions (no podcasts, phones, audiobooks) allows your mind to settle and naturally enter a reflective state.
The Power of Consistency: Making reflection a regular practice rewires how you process thoughts and experiences, gradually moving you from autopilot to conscious choice.
The Inner Vision Quest: Amanda's six-week intuition training program that dives deeper into personalized reflection practices to strengthen self-trust and intuitive decision-making.
Guest Quotes
"Most people don't reflect. So I can remember a moment in time, I actually remember exactly when that moment in time was... I realized I actually had no idea how to reflect."
"Without the reflection, you might just feel like a victim, like life is happening to you."
"When you really start to reflect more deeply... you give yourself the opportunity to make different, better informed or more aligned decisions in the future."
"Reflection is a gateway, and it sounds like such a simple practice, a simple thing like, duh, of course we have to reflect, but the truth is that most people don't ingrain any kind of practice into their own life."
"Through my morning pages, I have understood myself so much better. I've understood the things I'm afraid about, the things I'm angry about."
"You just walk and allow yourself to be immersed in the physical space where you are, and I can guarantee you that your thoughts will bring you into a state of reflection."
"It is possible to live your life by choice and reflection allows you to do that."
"You actually allow yourself to voice openly and freely everything that's in your mind without judgment, without feeling like you're doing anything silly or stupid."
Resources to Learn More
Books:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron — featuring the Morning Pages practice for daily reflective writing
Training & Programs:
Inner Vision Quest — Amanda Parker's six-week intuition training program that dives deeper into reflection practices, inner wisdom, and self-trust (begins October 21st) - https://www.amandaparker.co/innervision
Related Podcast Episodes in the Mini-Series:
Episode on grounding
Episode on protecting your energy
Episode on how to hear your inner wisdom and why it matters
Terms & Tools to Dig Deeper
Aligned Decisions — Choices made based on genuine self-understanding and what truly matters to you, rather than reactive or autopilot decisions.
Conscious Choice — Making decisions intentionally based on self-awareness and reflection, rather than operating on autopilot or reacting to circumstances.
Grounding — A spiritual and energetic practice (covered in a related episode) that helps center and stabilize your energy.
Inner Dialogue — The continuous stream of thoughts, concerns, and inner commentary happening in your mind throughout the day. Morning Pages helps externalize this.
Inner Wisdom — Your intuitive knowing, inner voice, and deeper knowing that guides you. This mini-series explores how to access and trust it.
Inner Vision Quest — Amanda Parker's six-week intuition training program designed to help participants develop personalized reflection and decision-making practices for stronger self-trust (begins October 21st).
Intuition — Your natural inner knowing or instinctive sense about situations, decisions, and truths. The podcast series explores how to hear and trust this guidance.
Morning Pages — A daily writing practice from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way where you write three full pages each morning without editing, judgment, or concern about content. Used for clearing mental clutter and accessing deeper self-understanding.
Nature Walks (Mindful) — Intentional walks in natural settings without digital distractions, allowing space for thoughts to settle and reflection to naturally emerge.
Oracle Cards — A divination or guidance tool used for reflection by pulling a card and interpreting its message in relation to your life. Amanda uses this with the daily question: "What do I need to know today?"
Reflection — The deliberate practice of pausing to examine your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and choices; asking deeper questions about what matters to you and what you want to change; the foundation for conscious decision-making and living by choice.
Self-Trust — Confidence in your own intuitive knowing and decision-making abilities, developed through reflection and understanding yourself more deeply.
Victim Mentality — The feeling or belief that life is happening to you rather than through you; the opposite of the empowered state that reflection cultivates.
Thanks for listening!
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Episode Transcript
Amanda Parker: [00:00:00] The choices we've made or the situations that we have found ourselves in and the way that we've reflected to be able to make different choices. And as we were talking about it and I was sitting there looking at this reflective, you know, set of questions, I realized I actually had no idea how to reflect.
It wasn't something that I did. And it wasn't something that I had ever been taught how to do.
Welcome to Don't Step On the Bluebells, the podcast for personal healing and transformation take center stage. I'm your host, Amanda Parker, and I'm a fellow seeker on the journey of personal growth. Join me as I delve into the stories of gift. Healers, guides, and everyday people who have experienced remarkable transformations.
Listen in as they share their practical wisdom to enrich your everyday life. And don't forget to hit, subscribe and never miss a new episode. [00:01:00] Welcome to Don't Step on the Bluebells. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the practice of reflection. So this is a part of a mini series of episodes that are all talking about inner wisdom and self-trust, really getting an understanding of how you can better hear.
Your own intuition. So you will have seen previous mini episodes about grounding and protecting your energy. There's an episode about how to actually hear that inner wisdom and that voice when it speaks to you and why it matters. So I share some of my own personal stories of times when I did listen and times when I didn't listen.
And today we're just talking about this act of reflection. So reflection is something that seems. So simple, and if you're on my Instagram feed, you probably see people talking about things like this all the time. You're [00:02:00] journaling, practice and et cetera. The truth is that most people don't reflect. So I can remember a moment in time, I actually remember exactly when that moment in time was.
It was 2013 or 2014, and I was taking my very first coach training program, so I was working for WW F Germany at the time, and they had this opportunity that you could become an in-house coach, and I was so excited. I had worked with my own coach, I really enjoyed it. I was really excited to learn more about this and to be able to do it with other colleagues inside the organization.
So when I had that chance, I joined the program. We were working through, I don't remember how many months the program was, maybe it was like six months to be able to train as an in-house coach. And one of the exercises that we were looking at was the way that we make changes in our life. And it was all about like decisions, experiences, and then [00:03:00] reflecting and then making choices, et cetera.
And I remember that we were talking about. Our own reflective practices and how we actually take that time to consider what's happened in our life. To think about the choices we've made or the situations that we have found ourselves in, and the way that we've reflected to be able to make different choices.
And as we were talking about it and I was sitting there looking at this reflective, you know, set of questions, I realized I actually had no idea how to reflect. It wasn't something that I did. It wasn't something that I had ever been taught how to do. So even though throughout my life I had always kept journals, I had always been, you know, writing albeit rather inconsistently in uh, my earlier years.
I never really understood that the point was to be able to reflect. What's happened in my day? What's happening in my life? What's happening in [00:04:00] my relationship? Does this feel good? Does this not feel good? What would I like to be different, et cetera. So I had never actually done that before. The reason I can remember this so clearly is 'cause there was a before and there was an after.
There was this moment in time where I suddenly realized I was not reflecting, and I had an understanding of how that really impacted me in a way that I literally had never. Even conceived of, and I have been seeing it lately, especially like on my LinkedIn feed. I will see people who are talking about these pivotal moments in life and they're like going through these really big aha moments for them where they're suddenly like, Hey, reflection's really important.
You should be reflecting and reading that. I realize. Yeah, no, it's true, and most people don't know it and actually. There is a fountain of wisdom and knowledge and information about how you can [00:05:00] reflect and why it has a positive impact on your life, and so many people are still waking up to that. So as a mitzvah to everyone who is listening, I just wanna share with you that it is possible to live your life.
By choice and reflection allows you to do that. So if you don't take the time to really reflect and go within, you probably miss a lot of the nuance and richness of your own life. A lot of these lessons that come to you in both small ways and big ways, you know, we always pay attention to the big ones, but without the reflection, you might.
Just feel like a victim, like life is happening to you. And when you really start to reflect more deeply and to think about things like. What's the impact of this on me? How do I feel about it? What am I upset about? What am I happy about? What would I [00:06:00] like to be different? When you actually give yourself the opportunity to reflect on that differently, to really see the nuance of how these different events and choices in your life impact you, you give yourself the opportunity to make different.
Better informed or more aligned decisions in the future. So reflection is a gateway, and it sounds like such a simple practice, a simple thing like, duh, of course we have to reflect, but the truth is that most people don't ingrain any kind of practice into their own life. So I'm gonna share with you the ways that I do this in my life.
Once again, there are so many different techniques or tools that you can use, so you have to find what's best for you. And we will go deeper into this in the Inner Vision Quest, which is my six week intuition training. That kicks off on October 21st. So this [00:07:00] is gonna be one of the tools that we're going deeper into.
To help you find exactly what it is that works for you in your life, that helps you to continue making better aligned and better informed decisions that help you live the life that you actually want to create. So one of those practices is. Daily journaling. So I have been journaling in different forms throughout my life.
I really started to do it more systematically when I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and she has a practice, she calls Morning Pages, and she basically tells you to sit down every morning and fill three pages of a notebook and she doesn't care what's in there. Every single thing that's in your mind, all of your fears, your doubts, everything you're excited about, your laundry list, like whatever it is, goes into the notebook.
If you can't even think of what to say, you just write, I don't know what to say, but you better be. You better [00:08:00] fill the three pages. And this practice has allowed me to just see what is that continuous stream of inner dialogue that is always happening. Through my morning pages, I have understood myself so much better.
I've understood the things I'm afraid about, the things I'm angry about. I've written about dreams and hopes. I've written about. Identity shifts. So it all comes out and it's all a mishmash. No one reads these books. You can burn it at the end to make sure of that, but the truth is that you actually allow yourself to voice openly and freely everything that's in your mind without judgment, without feeling like you're doing anything silly or stupid.
You just get it all out onto the page, and that's how you're able to actually free your mind from having to think through. And it gives you a chance to see what you're working through. What's actually important to you if you were to [00:09:00] look back at your journals? You might find things that you were working on a year ago are no longer important to you today, and that gives you another chance just to reflect on how far you've come or if you see that a year ago you were working through the same exact problems, that's another point of reflection to say, huh, this hasn't changed.
Do I want it to, would I actually like to make this different? Another practice that I use for reflection I've shared in other videos and other podcast episodes, and that is really using Oracle cards. So I like to start my day by asking what do I need to know today? And I pull a card from whatever my favorite deck is at the time, and I take a look at the image and then I read the book and I'm able to see does this feel true?
How does this relate to my life? So you'll start to notice that a lot of reflecting is also asking yourself some of those deeper questions. What [00:10:00] feels true for me? What is working well? What do I want more of? What do I want less of? And really start to inquire into yourself what matters to you. Because that gives you clarity to what you like, what you don't like, what you want life to feel like, what you want life to not feel like.
The people who are supporting you, the people who are not supporting you, and it allows you to have enough information that you can make informed decisions when the time comes. One more practice that I'll share with you today, and this is something very simple, is just going out in nature for a walk. You might take a 20 minute walk or a 30 minute walk.
Walk where there's open space, maybe there's trees. I love to walk amongst the trees. So whatever you have in your vicinity, don't listen to a podcast. Don't listen to an audio book. Don't text. Don't be on the phone with someone. Just walk and [00:11:00] allow yourself to. Be immersed in the physical space where you are, and I can guarantee you that your thoughts will bring you into a state of reflection.
Sometimes it might be very noisy. Oh, why is that, man, you know, why is his dog off leash? Or why is she wearing a scarf in July? Whatever. Don't judge. The, the thoughts will come, the voice will come because we're not used to giving ourself that space that we need to just let things settle. So that's all that little like nervousness and movement and shifting that just helps you to settle into the place.
But. If you make this a practice and do this, you know, three times a week, four times, if you're pos, if you're able to, you will actually start to notice a difference in how you process your thoughts and the things that are happening around you. So this is again, a very short introduction to what is reflection, why it matters, and a few practices that you can try out on your own.
We go into [00:12:00] so much more detail on. Learning how to find your own best practice that serves you to make better decisions in your life in the inner vision quest. So if you're interested to join us in that intuition training, you can go to www.amandaparker.co.
And you'll have a link to everything you need in the show notes if you would like to join us. So happy reflecting, and thanks for tuning in to this episode of Don't Step on the Bluebell. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode of Don't Step On the Bluebells. If you enjoyed this conversation, please give the podcast a five star rating wherever you listen, and don't forget to hit, subscribe and follow along so you never miss a new episode.