As a grade 12 student, I’m at an incredibly important transitional period in my life. Transitions are difficult and more often than not I find myself avoiding the inevitable change as much as possible. But as we age, change is a natural occurrence. The self improvement genre is generally targeted at those struggling with change, transitions, or motivation. How fitting is it that our most recent project was entirely based off self improvement books, and challenged us to apply them to ourselves. The general idea behind the project was for each of us to read a self improvement book, consider the information, share our opinions, and create something to convey a message from the book to our audience. Unfortunately a teenager walking into a library and picking a self improvement book off the shelf over anything else is not a common occurrence. This immediately posed a challenge for myself and my class. However when you take a step back and look at the big picture of PGP/CLC, the course is about growth and transition, two things that self improvement goes hand in hand with.
We kicked off the project in December, having been assigned our books and a research task about our author. My biggest takeaway from this first keystone was that self improvement authors are often very odd individuals. Our class had authors ranging from business tycoons, to monks, to navy seals. However all these authors do share one commonality, they’ve all experienced some form of self improvement and made the choice to teach others their strategies, even if there’s already a million books about the same thing. I was given Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead to read and discuss. My author bio, in which I go into detail about Brené’s education, background, and career, can be found here.
I had some difficulty at first, trying to justify the reasons behind people writing these types books, Brené included. In my research I found that Brené suffered from undiagnosed OCD in her early twenty’s. Like many of the authors, the fact that she faced adversity within herself completely changed her outlook on life. I think the value of the self improvement genre is in those books that are written by people who have lived through difficult experiences or transitions. With a large chunk of the genre being very superficial, it’s incredible to pick up a book and actually find it inspiring and applicable to oneself. I discussed this idea further in my book review after having finished the book. I really enjoy reviewing media, especially books, although usually my go to genre isn’t self improvement. That being said, with this particular keystone I conveyed the exact message I wanted and explained how Dare to Lead felt to me quite well.
Our driving question was, “What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship?” Heavy question if you ask me. Not even our authors could’ve told us everything we need to know to answer that. The final product after researching, reading, and reviewing was presenting an artifact that segmented our personal takeaway(s) with the book’s actual goals. Dare to Lead discusses the keystones of leadership, and the skills and strategies to deploy them effectively. In “Rumbling With Vulnerability”, and essentially the entire first section of the book, the idea that “Clear is Kind”, comes up. I find that as a student, employee, and even just as a teenager, clarity is often lacking in my life. Whether I’m the one failing to be clear, or someone else is, I know that if this idea was applied more frequently things would go a lot smoother. Brené and I both know it’s not that easy, nothing in regards to daring leadership is. My artifact was based off this idea, not only because my physical representation of it made for an entertaining metaphor, but also because this part of the book felt so applicable to myself. I came up with examples of situations where clarity is vital, for example discussing your marks with a teacher. I had my audience members pull these questions from a sandbox and respond to them using rumble statements from the book, and clarity and kindness from the heart. My exhibition went exceptionally well in regards to my responses and interaction. I did find it difficult to give my spiel on the book to this particular audience, students in grade 8-12. Perhaps something I’d do differently next time is prepare a more concise and engaging speech to share the important details from the book with my audience.
As an individual who often takes charge and enjoys leading, Dare to Lead was obviously a perfect pick for me. As I approach the summit of my transitional year, I’m forced to consider things like how my leadership will transfer to new environments. Upon further consideration combined with trying to answer this driving question, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I need to know now is that to continue lifelong learning and active citizenship, I need to be clear, I need to be vulnerable, and I need to be willing to rumble. Brené’s ideas are directly pulled from traits of daring leaders, but they can and should be applied in every aspect of my life. Nothing about change is easy, especially at a young age, but in learning to understand, accept, and use resources like self improvement books and content to better yourself and the experience of a transition, you can and will thrive. Thrive as an active citizen and lifelong learner.
