What’s your learning path?
Over the past two weeks, I’ve experienced a delightful mix of learning. I stepped into the Dalai Lama‘s Guide to Happiness, the free 10-day challenge on the 10% Happier app. (If you’re unfamiliar with this work, the focus is on gaining skills in happiness and compassion through meditation.) I also had the good fortune to be a part of the Drawify team to graphically record sessions of the New Rules for Work Symposium. I attended Genein Letford’s session, Intercultural Creativity for Leadership. These experiences reminded me of:
- the beauty of targeted, relatively brief learning experiences
- my love of applied science/research
- the wealth of great resources at my fingertips
- the importance of connecting with colleagues to deepen my learning after the experiences.
What about you? What fun and challenges in learning have you taken up lately?
What’s a new experience, resource, or practice for you?
As I reflect on my journey, I notice that I have a path or way of engaging…
There was a time when I would gravitate more toward all kinds of learning experiences that piqued my interest. Even if I wasn’t sure how to incorporate the learning into my life, I was game. For the past half dozen years or so I have:
~ sharpened my focus (there are only so many hours in a day, right?)
~ increased my discernment (because I can see relationships between so many diverse areas, i.e., coaching teens in the intricacies of the college admissions process and the art of Zentangle) and improved my habit of ensuring a direct connection between engaging the learning and using the new knowledge, skills, and attitudes in my business
~ strengthened my capacity to say, “No.”
I won’t lie, it hasn’t been easy to say “No”… and there are even more temptations since the pandemic.
What is your path(s) for your personal and professional development?
Have you noticed a pattern in your approach? What aspects of your plans for growth are serving you and which need some fine-tuning?
On a different and yet related note, i.e., taking on projects that are relevant, and useful, though in this instance required more time than imagined…
Last fall I decided to support my resolve of drawing as a daily practice by deciding to create a calendar that offered space to practice every day. I’ve been making my own planners for years, since my daughter was born and I wanted to include pictures of her in the one planner I worked with daily. Well, truth be told, the idea was exciting AND a bigger task than I anticipated… I reached out to folks, sought ideas for what they might want in such a planner, sifted and sorted through their responses, and got to work. I quickly realized that what I wanted was both similar to and different from what they wanted…
I worked to accommodate myself and the majority. Here’s a visual of my energy around the project…
I am using the first month now… making discoveries about what I have created. I will post a video of it on my Instagram account, jillig. I hope you will take a peek! I am:
- happy to offer it in this format for the remainder of the year. If you are interested. (I will have it published through Kindle Direct so it will be bound like a regular book. and with a different cover… I just had to make the prototype a fun visual.)
- going to make it an undated planner just for weekly practice starting in March… Stay tuned!