Journey From Within

Two months ago, I created my third personal development program called Journey From Within. The purpose of the program is to help people understand their learning patterns, revisit their journey, and help them find ways to better themselves.

When I think of this program, Maya Angelou's quote comes to mind.

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”

Defeats, like mistakes, are necessary for you to learn and better yourself. It is important to note that you're only defeated when you acknowledge that you have lost.

The program starts by exploring your journey map. 

A journey map has three phases: Foundation, Transition, and Acceleration. Foundation represents the first 25 years of your life. Transition represents year 26 through 40, then Acceleration is from 41 til 60.  For each of the phases, you’ll do an exercise to list life experience that is either positive or negative. Here are some examples of the Foundation Phase:

1. When I was 4 yrs. old, I learned that I love to draw. That event is represented by a green circle as it is a positive event in my life.
2. At age 6, I learned the meaning of 100%. If you don't get 100% on your test, your parents will be very upset. I mark that event by a red circle, a negative moment in my life. My parents correlated academic achievement to their level of love for me. I tried my best, yet for some reason I got good grades, but not honor roll level.
3. Between age 6 through 13, I went through my darkest times. I had no confidence, and the constant message that I wasn’t good and would not amount to anything hit home. I was feeling hopeless.

Continue this exercise until you list all your life events. For each event, be mindful in marking how you learned and if the event impacted you positively or negatively. Doing this exercise gives you an insight into how you learn and how negative events affected you. It also allows you to identify how you learn and grow yourself. Furthermore, you get to revisit a memory and document it.

The next step is to do the know-yourself exercise.

1. List your strengths, things you can continue to highlight and showcase.
2. List your weaknesses, things you need to change to grow or improve upon.
3. List your threats - the habit you need to stop doing to help you move forward. Things that are holding you back and preventing you from achieving your goal. Create a DO NOT DO list to remind you of what to stop doing to improve yourself.

Once you've completed the know-yourself exercise, you need to create your action plan. For each of your weaknesses, you need to create an action plan that enables you to improve yourself. The action must follow the SMART principles: SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ACTIONABLE, REALISTIC, and TIME-BOUND. Make sure to focus on incremental improvement. Once you've completed your plan, take action and be decisive. Find an accountability partner. An accountability partner is a person who you meet twice a month; during the meeting you'll discuss your progress and track it.

On a daily basis, start your day right.

Stay positive, and make choices that enable you to improve yourself. More importantly, stay in the moment and be aware of the decisions that you're making. Make sure your choices help you improve your weaknesses and achieve your goals. Work each day to improve yourself.  When you make progress, celebrate your success. Enjoy the incremental improvement. Remind yourself that no one will believe in you unless you believe in yourself.  Therefore, to enhance your value, you need to believe in yourself and give yourself a chance.

I want to close this post by saying, continue your journey and better yourself one day at a time. If you're interested in this workshop, reach out to me at will.lukang@gmail.com.  I'll be glad to work with you.