School of Life

Personal Growth requires Intentionality and Self Awareness.

For the last two years or so, I kept hearing about School of Leadership at Harvest Institute. At first I thought it would be a good growth space for my Partner given that he is a versatile businessman running his own Company.

I proposed that he does join but unfortunately on all those occasions he was unable to join.

Given my experience in the last two years I have been pushed into personal growth as well so I decided to enroll instead and the Partner committed to be my “Saponsa”. The school of life led me to the school of leadership.

Today, I thought I would share a bridged summary of my experience and lessons from the first Harvest Institute class that we had on 22^nd January, 2022.

First of all the school has mainly members of that Worship Harvest Church; goes along way in speaking to the fact that its a space that encourages growth of their members. The rest is obiter dicta so I will quickly share a few things from the facilitators.

One of the facilitators of the day shared an analogy of how the trees in a forest compete to be the tallest but as human beings we fail to get out of our confinement and live out our fullest potential.

It was such a wake-up call for me. When I had a chat with the “Saponsa” he jokingly mentioned that the trees compete for the sunlight in the forest whereas for us we are comfortable with sitting under the shade because we don’t want the sun to burn us. In fact, that we instead advocate for sunscreen.

The facilitator further took us through what he called the leadership characteristic of a child. I am still reading up more on this and I will share my findings in the subsequent blogs. However, key among these characteristics is “disorganization”. How organized you are, says a lot about your leadership potential.

You have to be organized to be able to make the right choices, explore your potential and those around you, innovate and cast a vision that others can buy in.

What I found critical in the session that day was that if anyone is to move from where they are to where they wish to be; they need to introspect, be self-aware and master self-leadership. You can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself. Interestingly, these are areas in which I have personally been growing and I hope that as you read this, you will also purpose to introspect and conduct a self-assessment so that you can evaluate where you are at, where you would like to go and what you need to get there.

From my experience, it is not necessarily an easy journey. It requires intentionality, honesty with yourself and acceptance. Generally, being self aware.

As we get into the second month of the year, It’s my hope and prayer for you that you will also seek out personal growth-in fact that you will add it on your list of personal goals and that as you look back; you will be proud of the person you will have grown into. One who is self-aware and has mastered the art of self-leadership.

Wishing you lots of love, joy, hope for a bright new month and an even greater and FIRM 2022!

Hope & Faith,

F.I.R.M