Avika Sood_MLP022_Self Leadership_Sept'11

I feel the famous quote by Plato – “The first and best victory is to conquer self", best summarizes our self-leadership sessions.

To begin with Snehal Maam started the day by discussing how far each one of us had reached in achieving our goals that we had jotted down in our first self-leadership session. As a group we discussed our individual stress points that arise in our day to day functioning during the course of this programme.  We put together our stress map, which was divided into four columns – cognitive, physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms. Post this we were made to experience the power of yoga to deal with the stress that we face in our lives. Ms. Susie Roy took an hour-long session of laughter yoga, by the end of which I was actually feeling quite relieved.

Anil Sir took up the second half of the day. The discussion was centered on the fact that true leadership comes from within a person, not from the outside. Further, we went on to discuss the immunity to change, which was formulated by Robert Kegan. This related more to the willingness to change in a person rather than the question of “Can a person change?” As individuals we always resist change. It is a human tendency to resist it when a person is told to do something. Change can truly take place only when it strikes an individual from within.

He explained this process to us through the immunity map, which consists of 4 stages. This immunity map explains to us what are the hindrances that come in the way for a person to actually make the change after he realizes it. This process takes place through the following stages in this particular order: 

• The first stage involves a person to understand and realize his purpose in life and what is his bigger goal that he wishes to achieve
• The second stage requires the person to identify who/what is most important to him in his life. Along with this discover those things that are coming in the way of achieving your goals. This is crucial as overcoming these hurdles is the foremost part
• The third stage involves understanding the reasons behind the things that prevent him from achieving his goals
• The final stage requires the person to remove any assumptions that he might be making that prevent him from achieving his goal

The immunity x-ray helped me to identify and connect with my inner self. Like the rest of us, I have also made certain assumptions that cause my resistance to change. It is essential to remove these assumptions for the change to occur in a sustained and permanent form. As they say change is the only thing constant in the universe. We then discussed that there is always a hidden competing commitment that each one of us has which also adds on to our resistance to change. This hidden competing factor can relate to anything from our personal to professional life. It is different for different people. One needs to first acknowledge this and then make an attempt to overcome this. Only then will the process of change be complete.

Through this session I learned that everybody has the ability to change but it is up to us to recognize the potential within ourselves that helps us to make this change.