How do you stay the course?
When you have clearly bitten off more than you can chew, how do you stay the course (Stay the course are my three words for this year)? That’s a question that I have been asking myself frequently. I am feeling that by choosing to work on an informal liberal arts education, I have bitten off much more than I can chew. But on the other hand, I am trying to keep things in perspective. I am supposed to complete my classical education by September 2014, but I haven't completed all my courses yet and I haven't read as much classic literature as I'd like. The reality is that what I am doing is a major endeavor, and I am realizing that it is very hard work. I am not super-woman, and I screw up all the time. Have you ever started a project and suddenly realized that you bit off more than you could possibly chew? How did you work through the difficulty?
At the beginning of this major personal project, I went through the process of choosing the courses that I was interested in, and if you are independently wealthy, that's not a bad thing to do. I soon realized that since I am investing so much time in this personal project, at the end, I have to be more valuable to myself and to my clients and prospective clients. With this in mind, I cannot simply choose courses because I am curious or think they would be fun. Several times during the process I had to change the courses that I wanted to take and this slowed me down, but it was the right thing to do. So far, I have taken nine courses, and by mid next week, the number will rise to 10. After I have taken 12 courses, I will focus on reading the classics.
Courses Completed for Informal Liberal Arts Education
- What Maps Tell Us
- Creative Reading
- Introduction to Visual Thinking
- Great Big Ideas
- Creative Writing
- History of Architecture
- Books That Have Made History: Books That Can Change Your Life (The only paid course)
- Invitation to World Literature
- Archaeology – Out of the Past
- Research for Writers (will complete in a couple of days)
Interestingly enough, as a result of making adjustments with the courses that I am taking, I am learning things that I can apply right now, which makes me happy. I started a few courses that I stopped midstream because only a few sections were useful to me. It was very difficult for me to stop in the middle because that isn’t my nature. How do you know when it’s time to let go? Letting go is something that I often struggle with.
To legitimize my informal liberal arts education, I sat down and created specific outcomes for myself:
- Creation of The Invisible Mentor Model
- Book about invisible mentoring documenting my journey
- Membership site
- An app that walks people through the invisible mentor process
- Liberal arts education
All of the outcomes are interrelated, and they are very important to me. I have created The Invisible Mentor Model, which will be used to develop the app. I am using the courses and the classic literature books as my invisible mentors, so I am learning from them. The book reviews and summaries of the classic books that I read, will be the foundational content for the membership site. The intent is to select the ones that have practical application today – using yesterday’s ideas to solve today’s problems. The book that I write will be based on my journey toward a liberal arts education, and at the end, I will have my informal liberal arts education.
Now, having said that, life is not tidy or simple. It struck me that I have to continue my liberal arts education for a while because there is only so much I can learn in one year. Many of you who have been reading The Invisible Mentor blog for a while know that reading the classics is not easy for me. Many of those books are quite ‘dry’. But, I have learned that it is very important to honor the commitments that I make to myself, so I march onward.
When you are working on a project that is much bigger than you expected, it is very difficult to stay the course, especially when there are many bumps in the road. How do you stay the course in this instance? For me, I have bitten off more than I think I can chew, but I plan to stay the course by taking one step at a time, realizing that at some point, I will reach the finish line. We have the capacity to achieve much more than we think, so I am focusing on that.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people. Connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.
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