story of my life

A Story by SADMAN

all i know is pain!!

Executive summary

The present project is an authentic journey report, which will help enable me to develop as individual. It is also a source of authentic self-reflection which shows who I am and how factors such as; attitude, self-awareness, and motivation shaped and changed my character over the years; this will be analyzed from both the positive and negative life experiences.

Recommendation

It will be of my advantage if I can turn my weakness into strength, I need to work on my people’s skills more, as openness creates a very good mutual understanding between the leader and the followers. I need to be assertive; if one wants to get his desired result he has to be an assertive leader. February 2007 (American Psychological Association).

A study shows being overassertive or under assertive is one of the common weaknesses of all leaders. Leadership is mostly about behavior things like personal character decision-making, inspiration and trust are things that every individual has, be it negative or positive one can always reflect into them and start making changes. I don’t really see it as a challenge to me rather an opportunity to build my way of becoming an authentic leader.

Journey of my life

My life;

Introduction

The journey to authentic leadership is an essay that guides you in knowing your genuine self by reflecting into your deepest thoughts. The process of self-discovery is not defined by your daily activities only but rather via expressing yourself in a unique and deep way. As stated by, George (2003) ‘ in order to know yourself you have to be self-aware, once you become self-aware then you find your passion, which subsequently motivates and acts towards the process of discovering

your self’.

Furthermore (self-awareness) is like your inbuilt guide compass, which helps you get to your destination in life. Knowing you self and accepting who you are is the key to your happiness.

Nancy Barrym CEO of World banking, said; if leaders can find time to know their selves and their passion, by looking deep in to their humanity and power rather than selfish needs and adapting to such method, then we can surely see change from our leaders.

Growing up in where 80% of the population lives under poverty, (Nigerian) one grows up in an environment with limited options. Such experiences, whether they are negative or positive helped shape, build and influence aspects of my character, such as: behavior, attitude, beliefs, emotions, and feelings.

Furthermore, this influenced my perception towards every thing, ranging from; the words I hear, things I see and watch on the media.

This led me to develop a negative attitude when meeting individuals from other backgrounds. Such experiences led me to build a subconscious barrier thus making it difficult for me to open up to others.

Child related crimes such as; kidnapping and scarifies for spiritual reasons, are common crimes in my country (Nigeria,) most of these acts are undertaken by power-hungry politicians, which in regards to my upbringing, this led my parents to raise me up with a higher level of cautiousness and awareness in regards to both the individuals and environment around me which furthermore led me to develop an intrinsic personality which made me isolate my self from my school peers.

The culture I grew up from made me very much aware, because life in my country (Nigeria) is hard and dangerous to live.

The cause behind my pessimistic stance developed from how I was taught to act around strangers during my youth, which later became an issue to me. People started discussing my personality from a negative perspective labeling me as rude and weird, not knowing the story behind this behavior.

Growing up to a full adult, I developed what I perceive as negative behaviors which have acted as weaknesses in many situations; I became self-centered, shy and nervous. These behaviors further worsened during my period of upper education as I was exposed to a larger social environment, and dealing with these personal issues became harder.

Self-aware

Such experiences led me to question my character, personality and ability and how they might impact me in the future if I fail to overcome them during my early adult life.

In regards to facing the real world I know that one day my social skills will be tested, one of which I have to prove my adeptness at social interaction both at the university and workplace.

So because of this I decided to take sociology as one of my course during the first year of my Foundation Program, little did I know that knowledge of this course (sociology) that I took will not just help me understand people more, but will one day serve as a ground breaker as one day my social skills will be questioned when interviewed, also it will be important to me in the marketing part because employers look for people with this kind of skills. So the knowledge of the course helped, a lot through out my study at the university, I’m also sure that the knowledge of this course will go a long way in aiding the future life that I’m yet to explore.

Dr. Jo Anne Bishop (2003) defines self-awareness as “…the conscious knowledge of one’s emotions, personality, motives character, and feelings”. She further explores the issue by discussing how Self-awareness is our conscious self-reflection on many different things that exist within us. It shows us how we could effectively reflect and navigate our physical, mental and spiritual behaviors that are challenged in our daily lives.

Self-awareness includes the way in which we channel our challenges and strength of our personality, it allows us to know our emotions and understand the impact it has on our equilibrium, and how it impacts others too. Methods of self-awareness vary from each person, this awareness, increases as we grow and go through more life experience.

Self-aware is a clear way for knowing your self or personality more, this include emotions, motivation, beliefs, thoughts, weaknesses, and strengths.

Continuation of my story

One good thing about this bad Attitude I developed, to keeping to my self and staying away not only from strangers but almost every body made me very much self aware of not only the environment I grew up in, that kidnapping of young children is at its pick, but where ever I go I’m, cautions of every thing that is going on around me, because that mentality I developed as a kid in Africa, about how talking to strangers will get you killed one day is still in my mind, as time goes by I became more and more aware of my emotions and how I could channel them which I found it quite helpful to me a lot in doing what I feel is right an taking the chance of doing it.

I very much took control of my life e.g. the ‘sociology’ classes I took in my international foundation program was a big step I took to help over come this issue am in.

Becoming more self aware of the environment I’m in has improved my social interaction when meeting some one new, what I took into consideration was the question? How do I perceive my self? Talk more of how do others perceive me; I took a very close objective look in to my actions believes, feelings and behaviors and decided to make a change, by becoming very friendly and nice to almost very one, which I did by firstly by working on my listing skills.

In relation to the theory; self-awareness allows, shows, create some kind of path for you to see where your thoughts, behavior, personality and emotions are taking you. Not until you’re aware of how to control them. Better yet you can’t make any changes in the direction you want your life to fall in.

A memorable experience that impacted me is one that took place recently; when I accidently ran into my old high school friend

Talking and reminiscing lead us to talking about how I always like putting my self in trouble, by always being in a fight, reason because some kid pretty much said some thing about my mom that I didn’t like or insulting her in my presence.

This I asked my self why? I react so strongly to situations that have to do with my mother! And to my greats surprise the answer was there I just didn’t know it, not till now when I was asked of what I value the most? And the fist things that came to my mind that I value in my life was my mother, religion, health, leisure, looks, and money etc.

I find it difficult to hold my self when something bad is said about my religion or my mother, it triggers my emotions quickly that I can’t control my self but have to fight or try to fight.

Because of what my mother went through the hardship of life to raise me,

Made me value her more than any thing in life, even though she’s not 100% healthy she never told us she’s been sick, until I started noticing it because I was growing up, where I started becoming more and more aware and worried about her health, no form of therapy can make me cool my temper when it comes to these issues.

Talking about health; health is the second thing I value the most, because since my childhood I have never been 100% healthy, plus my mothers sickness is genetic so I have a high percentage of getting the same dieses (high blood pressure) because of that, health issues became a subject of matter to me, I became so aware of what I eat, eating healthy food became so important to me I reduce the amount of salt and sodium I take on a daily basis, I make sure I always get enough rest and sleep which all of this reduce your chance of getting any form of cardiovascular dieses and last but not the list is praying I always pray and ask God to help me, and cure my mother through all this health issues

Work book3

Certain daily activities and practices have become what I refer to as personal motivational drivers, which include:

Watching ‘movies’ (leisure), watching news, being around my (family, relationship), religion (praying) helping (charity) and going to the ‘Gym’ (health, life, looks) as my motivational drives.

Starting off with watching of movies I have a passion for watching movies once I can get my warm milk by my side. For every sip of my warm milk I take while watching a movie, it directly activates my positive emotional energy.

So whenever am feeling down or lost I treat my self with watching a movie and a nice warm cup of milk. It makes me feel relaxed and calm, it takes my mind away from reality of life. It helps me disconnect my self from all my problems.

When ever I feel really down by not getting some thing or having that feeling of some one being better than me, I turn on the news channel on my TV and once this is on, I know I will see something that will touch my heart which will make me realize how lucky I’m living in a safe environment, with access to clean water, food at my own disposal any day any time, so these kinds of thing too motivate me a lot, I stop to see and look at how god has blessed my life.

I found peace in my heart when I pray, It is like all my worries go away very time I pray, to me is just like how some people go for counseling when their going through some hardship in life, to me is the opposite I pray to God and tell him all my worries, and to my surprise I feel happy is like opening up to my God, instead of it the other way round people say opening up to your friend.

I love giving out charity to the less privileged once it gives me some kind of happiness that is unexplainable, it motivates me more and keeps me going, seeing how little it is to me, but much to them, tells me how perfect my life is which leave’s me no where but to be always thankful to God.

Another thing that motivate me or makes me happy is when am around my family I feel secured, relief, and calm I value relationships so much more especially when it comes to family.

When ever am stressed out going to the gym helps me a lot it relaxes my mind a lot and makes me happy because I know not only am ‘I doing it for fun but also it is good for my health and it also keeps me in shape, I care and value life, praying, watching movies and looks these four things are the main motives behind my passion for going to the gym, which I see them as my personal intrinsic motivation.

I regard selecting this major, business management here at the university as one of my extrinsic motivation. I didn’t pick this major for my personal interest but rather the money I will make when I graduate, I don’t pretty much enjoy studying the major I’m just interested in getting a good grade which will get me a good result at the end of the day that will get me a good job, which will earn me a good salary.

Strength and weakness

Furthermore some of my strength are as follows; critical thinking, good listener, honest, and very flexible to changes. Patience

Roger Martin from the Rotman School of Management said in New York Times, critical thinking “has always been a prized attribute of leadership.”

I have a very good critical thinking ability, people often say I think ahead of my age, I’m very creative in logically solving problems of my self and others, I have this skill of seeing things in many deferent ways you could think of.

To be continued....