Goals, Skills, and Interests
This xMind map outlines all of my goals, skills and interests in each of the 8 P's:
Personal - Peer - Parentage - Project -
Professional - Political - Patrix - Planetary
To view the different sections, please use the slider at the bottom right of the image.
In summary, the goals that will reach into all of my project OPs are the following:
- auto-didaction pedagogy
- lesson planning for self
- self-discipline
- promise keeping
- conscious intervention
- positive theory creation (of self and world)
- trust of instinct
- "negative voice" rehabilitation
- travel and experiential learning
- time in Nature
- care of friends and family
- self-care, noticing stress and emotional imbalance
- professional development in landscape design, plant-based learning, and techno-natural building
Awakening the Dreamer Quest
This exercise is from the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium by the Pachamama Alliance, taken from Laura Kaestele’s Capstone LIPD. I found it to be an incredibly useful exercise in realizing the interconnectedness of my passions and my visions for the meta-context, and the many boundaries and overlaps embedded within. I drew arrows connecting different elements for hours, meditating on moments of buoyancy and freedom felt in my life and connecting deeply with my ideals and morals. I could have continued this exercise for another while, but felt that they could eventually all be connected--and for the sake of paralysis by analysis.
Behavior Patterns and Actionable Change
It came to my attention recently through a book on meditation (10% Happier, Dan Harris) that I can drastically change my life if I can evaporate the self-destructive voice in my head. I did some research and landed on a course taught at MIT called "Designing Your Life". The graph below (click the top right arrow) shows a modified version of the "18 Areas of Life" from the instructor Lauren Zander broken down into Positive and Negative relations to the area as well as solutions (Action for Change) to the weak parts of each, an idea taken from Laura Kaestele's LIPD. I spent several hours with this exercise, especially focusing on the solutions. I will keep returning to this document as a reminder to myself of where I was and how I have developed.
There are 8 methods or steps to working the muscles of theory change and promise-keeping that I will be using to alter or rid of the naysaying, nagging, buzzing voice in my head. They are below, click on the second arrow to the right to expand.
Observing and Transforming Theories and Behavior Patterns
Changing Negative Theories and Behavior Patterns
1. Promises and consequences and areas of life
- Developing personal integrity
- Making and keeping weekly promises
2. Theories
- Examining theories about the way the world works
- Discussing how theories affect what is seen as possible and impossible
- Learning how to make new theories that align with our dreams
3. Theories, purges, and thought logs
- Hunting for theories about the way the world works
- Keeping a log of thoughts
- Purging the mind of destructive thoughts that prevent us from honoring our promises to ourselves
4. Excuses
- Identifying excuses that take away the responsibility of being great
- Debunking the excuses that are holding us back from our dream life
5. Parent traits
- Examining how personal traits can be a reaction to parental traits
- Identifying how parents' traits live within us
6. Haunting incidents
- Finding haunting incidents in our lives
- Learning the lessons that haunting incidents suggest we need to learn
7. Cleaning up haunting incidents
- Resolving haunting incidents so that they do not haunt us anymore
- Learning how to feel proud and confident in our skin
8. Connecting theories, traits, and haunting incidents
- Explaining how haunting incidents arise from our traits and theories
- Analyzing haunting incidents for insights into how we should evolve to reach our goals
All Quadrants All Levels
AQAL Model with my lines connecting areas of the quadrants as a meditation in the process of moving from Tier 1 to Tier 2 Integral thinking. From top left clockwise:
Individual Interior, Self and Consciousness - Values, thoughts, feelings, self-concept.
Individual Exterior, Brain and Behavior - Appearance, body language, tone of voice
Collective Exterior, Social System and Environment - Structures, laws, norms, social interactions
Collective Interior, Culture and Worldview - Shared values, culture, paradigms, ethics
Habits of Mind
The following images are from learning researchers Costa and Kallick:
"The Habits of Mind are an identified set of 16 problem solving, life related skills, necessary to effectively operate in society and promote strategic reasoning, insightfulness, perseverance, creativity and craftsmanship. The understanding and application of these 16 Habits of Mind serve to provide the individual with skills to work through real life situations that equip that person to respond using awareness (cues), thought, and intentional strategy in order to gain a positive outcome."
Our Character, Principles and Values (i.e. honesty, community, humility) give purpose to these Habits of Mind which in turn help us learn using creative, strategic, insightful tools and techniques. This all affects the quality of content in our work--in other words, our competence and attention in the world.
Tracking
I plan to reflect on each of these elements at week's end during my project OPs using the Google Form below.
Skillflex Tracking
The document below is a Google Form I created in January of 2014 to track different skillflex developments. During my Action Learning Cycle 1, this proved very useful to see improvements and weaknesses, as well as an overlay on my pathway cycle to find how situations affected certain skillflexes (i.e. during my tenure as Selectwoman of Andover my Patrix and Political skills went up while my Professional and Self-care ares dropped). Note: please do not fill out the form as it affects my results.
The graph (below) is an example of the information synthesis: this is how I'd like to see my Skillflex Chart at the end of this action learning cycle in April, 2016.
As a new type of skillflex tracking, I will be using the Habits of Mind (left) in another Google form to be filled out weekly.