Article # 14 – You
We re-read the last YOU post to get ready for this one. You may want to do the same. We are working to create context for helping YOU to build your own soul Roadmap. We suggested a considerable time investment in individual labor by you in the last YOU post. This one will be less onerous. Catch your breath, relax, breathe in, breathe out!
When I was a college professor, my first assignment to students was to invest time to write 1,000 words about themselves and send it to me a week before the first class. I asked my students to tell me about their backgrounds, their personal history first and then their current lives as university students. I graded each student on the authenticity of their writing (college professors have a high BS detector) and the literary construction of the missive. The reason I did this was simple. I am a student- focused professor. The better I understand the student the more effective will be the education experience. While I knew many of the students were there primarily for grades, I was there to not just assign grades but to give the students knowledge, skills and abilities for use after leaving the University.
Many of my students asked me privately about their first assignment. Some complained about personal privacy. Others peppered me with questions about why that information was important, especially because I taught entrepreneurial ethics at a business school so it seemed an unrelated assignment. Another smaller group of students would talk with me about how hard it was for them to write about themselves. Students in their early 20’s were just beginning to see themselves in greater context. Early adulthood and the rather daunting task of leaving the structure and comfort of academia to sail out into the blue ocean of commerce and industry requires a good deal of self-knowledge.
And here we are doing it again, with YOU our readers, regardless of your age.
Since 1986, we have been serving people in helping them to build their own soul roadmaps. One consistent aspect of our work is how difficult it is to effectively do self-assessments across the board, but especially spiritually. We continually ran into barriers as people built their lives upon an inaccurate personal image of who they actually were and how they were wired. Our work helps YOU get to ground zero and begin to build from the authenticity of personal identity. The benefit of doing the heavy lift of self-work in the previous BLOG in this category is the ability to apply the new understanding about YOU to the new Soul Roadmap YOU are now driving upon. Perhaps that 1000 word assignment is a good project for you. If so, be honest, unvarnished, and as thorough as you can to see what it reveals to you. Have you been living and operating based on an inaccurate assessment of YOU?
The University in which I worked required every professor after every semester to be evaluated by the students the week before the final grades were posted. My students wrote about the value of personal engagement as a factor in helping them learn and grow. We want to encourage you to continue to engage in this process because the benefits are substantial and lifelong. Each of these articles are intentionally designed and written to create a framework for YOU to efficiently build your Soul Roadmap.