Point of Departure

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson

Introduction

Welcome to the journey of life!

There are vast arrays of self-improvement books on the market that give guidance on how to reach your full potential. This book is different from these in that it gives you the opportunity to assess your current needs and skills and also provides you with ideas and activities to develop and practise your latent ability. This will have an impact on every dimension of your life. You will be embarking on an adventure, and hopefully you will discover and look at yourself and others in a completely new way.

This journey is intended to be full of interesting challenges, surprises, and anecdotes. You will be given the opportunity to explore (and maybe even discover) your own gifts and talents and learn how to consciously use them effectively. You will create your own paradigm or model to help you maximise your inherent abilities and to guide you in this new millennium.

You will be the captain of your own sailing craft. The model we will be using is that of building a boat and crossing tropical seas to an exotic island of your dreams, and learning to engage with other travellers and pirates you may encounter on your journey. The illustration of the craft outlines the concepts that it represents.

Travel Guide

The goal of this travel guide is to assist you, the traveller, in embarking on an adventure on which you will encounter a variety of different terrains. It is not an excursion for the faint-hearted, but it is guaranteed to enrich every element of your life. This guide is designed to help you explore your unconscious intrinsic and extrinsic motives and perspective on reality. It has been developed from life-skills training materials that I have presented over the years. It is specifically designed to challenge your mental and physical fitness and to assist you in evolving your personal sense of identity and self-esteem while fine-tuning your intuition. This is achieved by completing a number of activities and practical experiential exercises.

This travel guide has been compiled from a vast array of academic research materials and sources. Occasionally these are acknowledged within the text, but all are recorded in the bibliography.

At the end of each chapter, there is a Notes page where you can jot down any ideas, selfreminders, or thoughts that you might have.

Monitoring Your Progress

In the back of this travel guide is a list of the activities that will give you the opportunity to enhance your awareness and skills. On completion of each activity, mark and date your progress.

Travel Bag

At the beginning of each chapter, under "Travel Bag," you will find a list of items (similar to a list of ingredients for making a cake) that you will need to complete the activities for that particular leg of your journey. For example, for this leg of the journey you will need a journal, a piece of A3 paper or cardboard, old photographs, magazines, and bits and pieces from around your home and garden that are meaningful to you.

If you are ready to embark on this exciting journey and apply yourself to all the activities in full, let us begin! Your adventure starts with a personal collage, creatively exploring where you are at the present moment.

1.1 Activity: Make a Collage

A collage is a collection of unrelated items glued to a backing in an artistic manner. Page through some of your magazines and look at the things that you collected from your home and garden that are of value to you. Either sketch them or stick them onto an A3 sheet. The collage should reflect who you are and the people, experiences, and things in your life that have brought you to where you are today. This exercise will possibly take longer than you think, so take your time and enjoy what unfolds.

Journal

The purpose of the journal is to allow you to explore freely the thoughts that continuously whirl around in your mind. You will be encouraged to write in it regularly. Your journal should be completely private. Be honest and truthful. By writing things down, you clear the way for other thoughts and ideas to crystallise; blockages are removed, allowing new ideas to come to the fore. You will be amazed by what happens when you give your thoughts the opportunity to be fully expressed and explored. Previously elusive and abstract concepts become understandable and meaningful, enabling a clearer perspective.

Date your journal. This helps you to reflect back on certain recurring thoughts and feelings and to perhaps link them to certain events. For example, my close friend Nancy found, on ruminating through her journal, that her marriage always seemed to hit a rough patch in February and June. It was an annual pattern. By musing through her daily journal over these periods, she found it always to be the same. Her schedule was wall-to-wall booked with social events. Her husband, John, was the principal of a prominent school. The busy times in the school's social calendar were February and June. She was able to understand then why, as an introvert, she felt tense and distant from her husband during these months. They were both over-committed with social events, leaving no time and no energy for their personal lives.

My friend now knows in advance that these are going to be particularly stressful times for them as a couple and, with this awareness, plans her life around them. Either she plans for her work to take her out of town at these times, or she downscales her activities during the day so that...