Hello! I’ve recently worked on a newer subject called PGP (Personal Growth Plan). I recently worked on a project called “Creating Opportunities from Balance” and was centred around the driving question “How does balance within my life create opportunities?”. I completed 3 different investigations that I practiced throughout the Power of Imagination Field School, and will using in the rest of this school year to extend my habits to shape your effectiveness in your personal life. The techniques I worked to create opportunities for balance in my life were Positive Brain Training, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and Atomic Habits.
To start of this project I was introduced to an investigation called Positive Brain Training. I became more optimistic by training my brain in 5 different prompts. Each day we completed a prompt:
Tuesday was Conscious Act of Kindness
After each Positive Brain Training activity was completed I would reflect and record my feelings. Once I had a significant amount of reflections I noticed that the most effective and engaging training activity, for me, was Journalling. I think this was because I took time out of my day to expand on an idea and just flow write with minimal guidelines.
In addition to my most effective activity I noticed that meditation was my least in testing and beneficial activity. When I meditated I noticed that I tended to loose focus and I wasn’t really engaged. Sometimes I would feel uncomfortable with the actual mediation introductions and I would start to focus on bits of noice of visuals that irritated me. So I generally didn’t enjoy the meditation training activities.
While carrying through with my Positive Brain Training I also contributed to a group review on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Our class was spilt into groups that were each assigned one habit, I was in the Sharpen the Saw group. We read a short book and were tasked with creating a sentence summary of the book. Using decision-making skills and communication we expressed and contributive d to the main summary. I think this review was really helpful because I was reminded of what habits are and I would continue to learn the importance of them in the next investigation.
The last portion of this project that I worked on was reading a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book was a great book to read after my last years reading of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. To start of the reading section of this project the class was spilt into groups to created a customized reading schedule. I used my skills of what I learnt while creating my Personal Productivity System in Maker to create my reading schedule. At first I set the goal of reading 6 pages per day, but after using this system I noticed that I should change it so I made it 8 pages per-day and it worked out great!
Throughout the book I recorded my notes in a PKM and decided to spilt it into chapters and write a summary for each one. I think this method was successful. While reading I was able to connect to the driving question of “How does balance within my life crate opportunities?”. I found this book really interesting and it had many good points that I was intrigued in learning about.
I was really curious and moved by some of the concepts told in the book. I was able to apply some of the techniques into my life. I really thought the ideas of cues in your environment to be something that I want to try. I haven’t been frequently practicing my guitar so I wanted to change that. I took time out of my day through spring break to move all of my guitar equipment up into my room. By having easy access to my guitar I was able to practice and I feel like I’ve started to improve and my guitar instructor also felt the same.
Also within this photo there is a way I make a habit attractive. My guitar pick is purposely in my strings so I can remember to re-tune my guitar.
After reading the book I reflected on the reading and created a strong argument with a table group. I was able to look forward into the future of this subject and decided on which habits I will choose to implement in “Making Career Life Choices”. When reflecting I feel that I need to work on breaking bad habits and I can do this by trying to ‘Make it Unattractive’. I find this similar to one of the seven habits I want to improve on “Put First Things First” because the unattractive habits are last priority.
Overall, I think this section of my Personal Growth Plan was really important and I was able to build on skills that will help my in the future. In my opinion I think reading Atomic Habits by James Clear really made myself aware of the idea of balance and the best way to approach the use of habits. I think I’ve built enough knowledge throughout this project to answer the driving question “How does balance within my life create opportunities?”. I think balance within my life creates opportunities because it develops control over my life and leaves room to take risks that are opportunities, benefiting me in the best way possible.
What habit do you want to make attractive?
Thanks for reading!
Alicia 😀
Credits
*image credit – https://images.app.goo.gl/w988GVbMNYM1gDAn6