Empowering your Self

I enjoy January because it’s the time of year when we actively think about not only improving at work or financially, but how we can improve ourselves. We declare our intention to invest time and energy on Self, in whatever form it takes. That’s powerful. And possible. We can do this, we simply need to take a breath and start!

With the temperatures below normal for weeks now, I am not making any progress on my first goal of taking back the yard. Undeterred, I’m also giving myself a personal challenge to read one book a month. For my purposes, books for relaxing don’t count, only ones that stretch me beyond what I can do now. They will cover lots of topics and areas of interest. Some call that Self Help, I prefer to think of it as Self Empowerment for whatever I’m focusing on.

I admit, I LOVE these types of resources. I use them when the timing suits me, deep dive on the topics that are most interesting and practice what I learn at my leisure. I’ll confess, these gems often go unfinished or worse, unstarted. (I know, that is shameful!) Now is the time to give myself a goal. To prove I am not kidding about this challenge, it is books I have not started yet – 12 new to me reads. I’ve just created a Goal in Maple for 12 Self Study Books by Dec 31. And by declaring it publicly, I have all of you to help and keep me honest about working on this.

Do you believe in signs? Oprah Winfrey calls them whispers. I think of it as a nod of approval from the Universe, letting me know I am on the right path. While I was contemplating my reading challenge, the Universe gave me the nod: Brendon Burchard’s new book High Performing Habits arrived unexpectedly at my door. I’m taking that as affirmation and making this the first book for 2018. I glanced through and it seems to be right up my alley – inspiring quotes, prompts and questions to encourage deeper thinking and help relate the ideas to my own life. Though the book is big (kinda scary) I think it’s going to be spot on for me (super exciting)!

Folks asked about the Self-Study features in Maple and this is a good chance to shed some light on them. For me having all of my responses or reactions to the content of a book like High Performing Habits, stored in one place, that I can get to wherever or whenever, makes the learning process easier. I contemplate the topics whenever they start to click. Sometimes that is while I am reading or while I’m practicing a new habit, and admittedly the big Ah Ha Moment (which I can’t get enough of) does occasionally happen while I am on line at the grocery store or at a stop light. That’s how learning and insight works for me and the Self Study features enable that.

We built it (and Maple) to work for many approaches to learning – at home with a book, taking an online course, or in a classroom as a student. It’s flexible.

Here are the two things about Self Study I truly adore: First you can capture different types of learning activities, called Assignments. Whether its reading, watching a video, answering questions, journaling or actually doing something – you can summarize it and what you learned as a result of doing it. The other thing I can’t get enough of is the syllabus or Outline view. Normally we show your Maple Stuff as a list of entries, and you have that option in Self Study too. But when you use the Outline view you can see things as they appear in the book or course. So, if you tend to hop around and do things in different order, say reading everything at once, then you can still see how those chapters or lessons fit in to the bigger picture. It’s a really useful tool and we’ll bring you a Self Study How To page on Maple Insider shortly to get into more details.

Meantime, its time to enjoy whatever commitment you made to your Self for 2018. If you have started strong – well done you! If you are struggling, and we all do sometimes, just remind yourself this is worth doing. Then begin. Brendon Burchard said “commit to the first fifteen pages” and I think that is great advice. Small steps are still steps!!

During the month of January we’ll bring you ideas on how to use Maple to continue building your momentum. And we want to hear from you – use the Contact Us form to send us your ideas, tips or tricks to keep your commitment to Empower your Self going strong.

#EmpoweringYourSelf #HighPerformanceHabits #MapleSomething

Remember to Like, Tweet, Share @MeetMaple!