For todays post I will be sharing all that has happened during the last months in PGP. We went back to the seven habits like last year ( link HERE ) but this year we would not being doing a time machine like last year. We would be going through all the habits but this time around I feel that I have greatly improved from when I last demonstrated my knowledge on each habit. So here I am to explain how I have developed and how I have answered the curricular competencies which are Connect and Reflect.

The first step in the PGP journey this year was the introduction of Paradigms, paradigm shifts and principals. To sum it up, a paradigm is basically the way you view something in your life, it’s how you judge everything around you based on what you know about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean you know a lot about what you are judging, but somehow your mind has decided what you think about what’s around you. When your view on things shifts, than that’s called a paradigm shift. This is the point where you now realized something about a person or object that you haven’t before, and it doesn’t have to be a good thing always. To concluded it’s hard to navigate around when you only know certain things about objects, so until you can look at the world with an open mind, it will be very hard to find your way around.

As mentioned we learned a little bit about these topics last year but it wasn’t as clear. I was able to use the reflect competency to look back on previous knowledge and then apply what I knew to milestone 1 to create the three products below.

Principals on the other had are a basic set of things that everyone has in them. They are things such as loyalty, responsibility, hard work, etc.. However you can not gain these things over nigh, it takes time to learn and perfect these skills. This is just one of the things that everyone can do and must work on to be a better person.

To show these I created three examples. The first for paradigm shows a forest from the view of my brain, labeled are the thoughts I have on whatever object I have selected. It shows my set mindset on certain things in life. In the next image for the paradigm shift it shows the thoughts on an object before and after trying it, for example I had a picture of a taco and the notes on what I though before and after trying it. This shows how my views shifted after trying the actual food instead of just judging it based on what I knew about it before.

For the principals section it shows a comic explaining how perfecting a principal is not easy thing and can take a lot of time to do, but in the end it is always worth it.

That was a lot on one topic so the next ones will be shorter.

Now we move on to milestone 2 which is the private victory in which I explain how I have learned to prioritize my work, take responsibility for actions, and being able to know what I want to do before doing it.

To demonstrate I created another two pieces of work. The fist is a song which I created in GarageBand to replicate the feeling of pride and energy, all of the sounds I used are ones I consider “pump-up” music, as in something I would listen to regularly. I think it mimics a “positive self” vibe which is why I created it for the private victory section as it focuses on individuals.

The second piece is a playlist that I created. All the songs included are ones I think talk about a positive self which is what this sections focuses on. 

In the third milestone we now reach the public victory. This is of course the opposite of the private victory. In this milestone the activities are dependent on working with others to accomplish a bigger goal.

For this part I created a word art showing all the key elements of this habit. Most of the words I chose were ones like “trust, Win-Win, and public victory” because each one contributes something to the habit and are all necessary to accomplish the habit.

The second piece I did was a review, I went over what I thought about the public victory so far and what I though was more challenging for me. I also added what I thought I could work on in the future so be a my most effective self. I put a lot of thought into what I was going to put on the review and most of it is how I felt about the activities we did within the habit, and how I found some of them

tougher because I am not the most social person. Overall I can say I learned a good amount about teamwork and how to corporate with others.

For the public victory I was able to use the Connect competency because within the examples above I was able to connect and collaborate with others to successfully complete all the activities in the public victory.

Moving into the Renewal habit or milestone 4, we have reached the final step in the habits journey. Habit four is about taking the time to ease off of tougher jobs when you get tired, this way to can rest and then get back to it instead of just working non stop. It makes you more efficient and overall makes the job a little easier, so here are my examples for milestone four.

The fist is a simple drawing showing the four parts of renewal, soul, body, heart, and mind. These are the things that you must relax every now and then other wise you will tire out very quickly. Each part is in a different colour to show they are all different actions, but they are still part of the same habit. 

Then for the second part I took the drawing I had made and then created a song from it. Based on the order of the photo ( starting with soul and moving clock wise) I created a song with four different sounding parts that represent the four parts of renewal. Each part has instruments that sounds the way I think that part would, for example the soul section of the song is slower and more melodic where as the body section is heavier and has more beat to it. What I wanted to show in the end is that all the parts work together to create perfect harmony which is shown in the end of the song when all parts join together.

After all these habits have been completed we know reach the final stage where I had to create three final products to show all of the habits so far. 

First off I created a song that shows habits 4,5,and 6. The song acts like two very different people using many different beats and instruments to show one type of person how is calmer and one who is more rushed. The different musics go back and forth until reaching a point where they mix together to create a better beat, this representing two different people working together to make one amazing end product.

Secondly I have a drawing labeling all of the successful elements in a person, this shows habits 1,3 and 7. I created separate parts on the person and then put a small definition about what that part was about, and we can see they all lead to the result of a person who can create high quality work and has good work habits. The two wings show extra bits that help add to the process of being a successful worker. I then added the videos from my lessons that explain the three habits in the background to play along with the main image.

Lastly for habit 2 I made a kinaesthetic project. In it I show my ability to create a mental creation and then build up to that final product. I chose to create a structure out of marshmallows and tooth picks, and the shape of the building I would create is a giant “N” because why not. In my head I had an idea of what I wanted to make and based on that I made a sketch. It outlined the basic structure of my designs and what I thought I needed in order to make the structure stable.

From that sketch I started to build what I had imagined in my head, but as it turns out some supporting techniques are tougher than I thought. During the building process I had to rethink some of the designs because in real life they are harder to accomplish. In the end I created a structure that resembled what I had thought of from the beginning and I am actually quite surprised how well it turned out.

To concluded this entire post I will say that this time around I think I learned quite a bit more from the Seven Habits, I now know that with this new knowledge I can be my most effective self. I apologize for the length of this post I just felt I had a lot to talk about.

That’s all for now.