I'm Samantha Ibarguen and I'm an energy healer and a wellness consultant in New York City. You can find out more about me and what I do at Integrated Wellness — www.igwell.com.

Practicing self-contemplation is the act of studying your thoughts, your actions, and your desires for the purpose of getting in touch with your own inner wisdom. One of the things that you can do to cultivate self-contemplation is an exercise that I like to call review the day. At the end of the day think of five things that you did that you were proud of and if you want to you can write them down to have them in front of you, and think of five things that you did that for whatever reason you weren't proud of, maybe it was an action that you took, maybe it was a way that you acted in the face of a difficult situation, and again write them down just so that you have them in front of you. With this practice we become aware of what works for us in life, what makes us happy, what makes us joyful, what gives us a better quality of life. We also become aware of what doesn't work for us, ways that we're acting that we're not proud of, or things that we would want to change. Another way to cultivate self-contemplation is to use a tool called the witness. Now the idea with the witness is that we don't necessarily have control over what happens in our lives, we don't necessarily have control over what is coming at us in the moment, but we do always have control over and we always have a choice in how we are acting . And so when we use the witness we get to watch ourselves particularly in difficult situations. In a difficult situation, are we acting or making a choice that's going to make the situation more peaceful, more harmonious or are we acting in a way that's going to make the situation worse. And the idea of using the witness as a tool is that we are slightly separating ourselves from ourselves and watching how we're acting in the moment so that we can make a choice to empower us and make a choice to bring greater joy and greater happiness to our lives.