What if you had the power to shape your destiny?
My recent workshop, Hero’s Journey into Our Self-esteem, Self-care, and Self-leadership, was designed to guide participants on a transformative journey of self-discovery and empowerment, developing the confidence and tools needed to lead their own lives with the intention and purpose to create their own unique stories. This international workshop held in September 2024 in Greece, was facilitated by Dr. Patricia Novick, a 2023 Goldin Global Fellow, and Judith Delozier from Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP) Greece.
57 participants from across the globe joined both in person and through Zoom connecting through local pod centers in Tanzania, Jordan, Ireland, Germany, India, France, Kyrgyzstan, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe, making it a truly global and impactful experience.
Key Insights from Tanzanian Participants in The Hero’s Journey Workshop
This workshop marks the beginning of a personal development journey to discover our strengths. For the Tanzanian participants, most of whom were youth, it has been seen as the starting point between where they are now and where they aspire to be as grassroots leaders driving change in our community.
Edson Reuben, an attendee said:
“This workshop gave me the courage to value myself and to never doubt my strengths. From now on, I will be practicing positive affirmations as I learned from the ‘What I Like About Myself’ activity during the workshop”.
When we took time to reflect after this workshop participants recommended having more programs like this to reach more youth as it will help them into their journey of self-awareness and teach them how to welcome obstacles as useful resources in addressing adaptive challenges within our community. As a community leader and a Goldin Global Fellow, I am very grateful to have involved young people in this wonderful experience, which has brought new hope to them by allowing them to see their strengths and talents that they can contribute to strengthening positive changes in our community.
Staying True to What Matters Most: Identifying and Celebrating Distinctive Strengths
Holding the question of Who are we becoming? begins with remaining true to what matters most to you. Knowing our core values forms the pattern that connects us to our true potential and allows us to bring that potential into the world. Through self-reflection, we can identify what we stand for, what makes our hearts beat with joy, and asses how our choices align with our core values. This strengthens our decision-making process, by ensuring that our actions are driven by what we stand for rather than external pressures.
Identifying and celebrating our strengths is the key to finding balance, by bringing awareness to our unique abilities without judgment. Appreciating these unique abilities allows us to use them as resources to overcome obstacles to achieve our goals. Celebrating what makes us unique helps us to stay grounded and focused when we are faced with obstacles.
Walking into the Future
The lessons and connections I gained as a Goldin Global Fellow, significantly enhanced my activism journey and this workshop in particular. It is a transformative journey of self-discovery and self-actualization focused on enhancing self-esteem, practicing self-care, and developing self-leadership to unlock one’s full potential. The takeaway from this workshop was the idea of welcoming obstacles as opportunities for growth and learning while being responsible for our obstacles and transforming them into meaningful change.
Participants were encouraged to recognize that we are interconnected parts of a larger system that offers insights into our beliefs and actions toward our personal and professional journeys.
As Judith Delozier said:
“We are all members of the system. What is the system telling you? Find the positive intention and change the intention to something interesting.”
