Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Know thyself

I believe it was in early 2000,when we met to discuss the dcc course at hand that this assignment was first conceived by ranjan, as a means to ''understanding yourself'' - to map yourself, your life memories,sensibilities, capabilities, values, influences, beliefs, aspirations, goals, traditions and more - all that is rich in significance for you.

So that they may confront the question 'who do i intend to be?',we believed it would be useful for all students to go through a process to get in touch with themselves, to review what are the values they have just taken from their cultural environment, and after reflection which would they still hold on to. Having done it here it would become a journey they would hopefully undertake many times.

Over the years I have found that many students have felt transformed after the exercise, there is a feeling of liberation having acknowledged and then shared with the class these very personal facets of themselves. Classmates are revealed in new ways and the class itself emerges on a new plain with a better appreciation of other members and of the diversity held therein.

All students go through a rather uneasy churning when they spend some quiet moments reflecting before putting pen to paper, and there are always some who feel restless, and even somewhat diminished at the end of the exercise. Here I think it is important to remember that the attempt is not to measure what you are but to help in creating who you want to be.

As Csikszentmihalyi says in (Good Business) '' A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. Yet while everyone assumes that his or her identity is transparent, there are, in fact few things so covered with veils of deception as one's own nature. For that reason one must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.''

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