Art Piece Appreciative Reflection

Art Piece – Appreciative Reflection
Motivation:
The book, Building the Bridge as You walk on It, has brought me to an intense reflective state where I have been working towards a better understanding of who I am as a person. When asked to build a creative, but relevant project for this book, I wanted to relate it in some way to my exercise on self-reflection. From there I decided on getting creative with the most reflective object I could think of, my mirror. This art piece is derived from my second and third exercises found in my change portfolio starting on page six.
Description:
The middle of the mirror is how I see myself. The outside frame is made up of little pieces of how others perceive me. The left side of the mirror is made up of

positive traits that other people said they would use to describe me as a person. The right is the negative traits, and the middle full sticks are my own descriptive words of how I see myself. Looking into this mirror is my approach at appreciative inquiry. While I am aware of my negative traits, I do not plan on trying to fix them, rather I plan to accentuate my positive traits as I look forward to my positive future. Quinn would suggest spreading this positive outlook through an organization, but in my current situation, I plan to spread it throughout my life and anyone involved in it. 

Initiating My Change Portfolio:
My Personal Application of Building the Bridge as You Walk on It

Daniel Monk
September 22, 2015
Project 1
BADM 772
Upon reading, interpreting, and digesting Robert Quinn’s Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, I have a new found motivation to initiate change within my own life.

My interpretation of this book has sparked my own interests in self-awareness and becoming purpose-centered. In result, I have discovered that I been lacking a well-defined purpose to my actions and existence. I am currently, and plan to keep on working towards unveiling my true potential through initiating change within myself. In demonstrating my application of what I have learned from this book, I will be explaining my inspired exercises that I used to begin on my path towards the fundamental state of

leadership.
Conceptually this book explains how external change happens internally. The clear message from this book is that the ingredients for an extraordinary life revolves around being purpose-centered. Constructing and then living for one’s purpose is a solid first step towards entering into the fundamental state of leadership. From this state others absorb this new energy and the personal change will soon spread towards widespread long-term change.
This book is aimed at initiating organizational change, however, I became most interested in the fact of how changing within sparks a new path towards an extraordinary life.

I used to think that I welcomed uncertainty with open arms, but I now know that I currently reside in the normal state which is preventing my own deep change experience. This book’s reoccurring subject of living a slow death in the normal state, personally stuck with me as I have been trying to figure out how to explain the lifestyle I would like to avoid. During my inspired self-reflation exercises I began to understand my own hypocrisies in relation to promoting an extraordinary life. This discovery has brought me to a new level of motivation that I plan to use towards my own transformation. In result, I am now on track to towards initiating change within my own

life.
In order to escape the hold of the normal state it was clear to me that the start to my path was to excel from my comfort-centered state into a purpose-centered state. I have not been able to clearly identify my purpose in life, this is my starting point towards a new life of change. Below are brief explanations of my self-reflective exercises. The results of these exercises can be found starting on page four.
Goal for these exercises: To uncover my purpose while finding my position in the process to precede self-change.
First Exercise: Uncover My Purpose
For my first exercise I took a few days to reflect on myself, and then I wrote a list of what I care about. I then narrowed this list down to only what I care about the most. I then cut this down to a list of one to two word statements that I see as core values in my life. Once again I condensed that list, improving it into a list of my three most important values. Lastly, out of these three values I chose the one combination of values that I could do for others. This resulted in my purpose, which is to ignite friendliness while generating experiences.
Second Exercise: Self-Reflection
My next exercise was to self-reflect by describing myself with three positive and negative traits. I again wrote a list, which I then condensed into three positive and negative traits I would use to describe who I am as a person. These words can also be found in the middle of my appreciative reflection art piece.
Third Exercise: Constructive Feedback
After writing down my own view of who I am as a person, I then wrote an email to 30-40 friends, family, and coworkers asking them to use three positive and three negative traits to describe me as a person. They were asked to submit their traits on a google doc in order to stay anonymous and I made it very clear I wanted honesty. In result I received thirty nine positive traits and sixteen negative traits. I continued to narrow this down until I was able to uncover three recurring themes for my positive and negative traits from the eyes of my surrounding. These words are also incorporated in my appreciative reflection art piece, surrounding the boarder symbolizing how these views surround my life.
In summary, Building the Bridge as You Walk on It has given me a broad picture of how to enter into the fundamental state of leadership in order to initiate organizational change. However, deeper within Quinn’s writing I picked up the positive personal experiences that come with change, and how it avoids a slow death. This is what inspired me to begin my own path towards change. As I began by becoming purposed-centered, I will next work towards being other-focused, externally open, and internally directed. My exercises were my start on this path, and they have aided in my discovering my purpose, to ignite friendliness while generating experiences, and helped uncover my position the process to precede self-change, the contemplation stage. As I continue to learn about myself my confidence will grow, which will ultimately increase my likely hood to walk naked into the land of uncertainty. What my future holds is a complete mystery, all I know is that it will be a positive one filled with success and failure.