When it’s time to head back to school, my inner self-evaluator rears its ugly head and tells me about all of the plans I made but didn’t execute, blames me for being unproductive, and ignores the learning at the Process Education Conference, renewal I achieved from vacation, and the pounds I lost from committing to more exercise. And I used to think I was the only one…
What an opportunity I have had to pick up Dan Apple, Wade Ellis, and David Leasure’s learning to learn book for grown-ups, The Professional’s Guide to Self-Growth. This book was spurred by, and influenced by research from, student self-growth papers during the 6-month Learning to Learn recovery course that was run at Western Governor’s University last year. Most WGU students are working professionals who are working full-time, trying to complete their college degrees, and most also have families. Dan, Wade, and David noticed Professional Risk Factors in student writings, and mined the associated Professional Characteristics that can be grown to mitigate the risk factors.
About 15 (mostly) Academy members have formed a professional learning community to work on our self-growth. We have our individual paths for seeking growth, and have a synchronous meeting every two weeks to share what we’ve learned about self-growth. And now I’ll share with you two important insights we’ve had so far. First, when working on self-growth, choosing a narrow context that really matters to you for reflecting on and developing strategies will accelerate the growth, and help you quickly develop strategies for growing other areas. And second, sometimes the problem you’re working on is masking a bigger problem – like procrastination may really be about being unmotivated (especially if the task isn’t aligned with your Life Vision) or lacking self-belief about a task because you’ve failed at it before.
So far, I’ve found plenty to connect with! One of the risks I addressed was “lacks discipline”. I’ve learned that I’m very disciplined – about the tasks I want to do! I was able to grow my discipline, prioritization, focus, and engagement for those other tasks that I was putting off. Now I’m spending at least an hour each week on long-term projects that had been set aside for months, and have increased my productivity on the every-day tasks that used to feel like a constant crisis.
In our biweekly community sessions, we have found that most of us spend 5-15 minutes per day on our growth work and are seeing the growth come quickly. This is a friendly, welcoming group for reflecting and exploring, with strong mentorship from David and Dan.
Would you like to get in on this self-growth journey? There’s still room for you. You can’t be “behind” because we’re all working on our own paths, and you’ll accelerate your start by drawing on what we’ve already learned. The group meets synchronously twice per month to discuss what we’ve learned. Some members aren’t able to make the synchronous meeting, but participate via the forum.
The PGSG group meets every month on the first and third Wednesdays, at 3/4/5/6 pm Pacific/Mountain/Central/Eastern for one hour. If you’re interested in joining, contact David Leasure at davidleasure@gmail.com. |
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