Gaurav_Shahare_BLP035_Self Leadership_Sep’11

The very first statement I heard about Self Leadership was

“Learn to lead yourself first than to others... ”

From that day onwards I have learned a lot about leading myself.

I think the purpose of this self leadership class is to make students think. Think about their life.. their goal.. their habits.. their attitude.. their achievements.. their happiness... their regrets.. and thereby help them to define their purpose in life then to make them realize true potential and then finally help them to achieve their goal using their strengths. In essence, this is what I have understood out of it.

It all started with The art of appreciative inquiry.. I think this is the very powerful tool to form a bonding between the individuals. I learned that when someone appreciates me, then I tend to relax my mental guards against that one and I tend to consider that particular individual more seriously. And same might be the case with the opposite person. This in a way helps both of us to form a kind of bondage. Even though it is a good thing to do, practically speaking it is somewhat difficult to practice until and unless we make a habit of it. And I am learning to that nowadays.

Next I learned about candle experiment – so called Aahuti. The main purpose of this experiment was to get rid of all your regrets. Most of the time we tend to carry burden of our regrets on our shoulders. This somehow refrain us from achieving the great heights. By offering our regrets to the fire, it is expected that we should make our mind free for new endeavours. On personal front, I think I am carrying many such regrets in my mind and I should practice this Aahuti experiment to get rid of them.

Next big thing I learned is to picture my dream both in best and worst cases. Then how can I use my courage to overcome my fears and avoid worst case scenarios of my dream. When I draw pictures of all these things, I realize that yes I have that potential to achieve my dream.

On the background on our habits, we learned that, how certain assumptions can hold us back, leading to particular habit which may not be a good one. Immunity X-ray exercise gave me a proper framework to work on the habits that I want to change. And it helps you to drill down to the root cause of that particular habit. And in the later part we came with the action plan to change those habits. Action plan was to identify friends with whom you can benefit on that habit front alongwith reading motivational books.

While I was introspecting about my learning in last 3 months, I realized that now I am able to look at my behaviour more rationally and I find myself in a position to make conscious choices between good and easy path. I find myself more open to suggestions to improve myself as an individual. Definitely these self leadership classes are helping me.

But above all I feel what matter more is your inner desire to learn and improve.