Nuggets of Self Development
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About this ebook
Oscar Wilde once said: The aim of life is self-development. It means we cannot stop improving ourselves, because development brings about improvement. Nuggets on Self Development demonstrates how you can do this daily through basic and simple action ideas that can help you make better choices in different areas of your life. Nuggets of Self Development will show you how to:
Cope with change
Motivate yourself through your mind
Choose the right attitude
Be Personally Accountable
Network today
Keep your customers through Service excellence
These and more are nuggets that ought to be taken one at a time since the book calls for some simple practical things.
Barbara O. Lawrence
Barbara Lawrence believes her purpose in life is to inspire and motivate others to be better than before. She is passionate about self-development and personal accountability, a concept that is about claiming 100 percent ownership of one's actions and their outcomes to ensure improvement. Her writing career started in 1985 as a journalist with the Vanguard Newspapers, Lagos, Nigeria, when her father, a renowned broadcaster and journalist himself, convinced her that she could write. However, her passion for personal accountability developed during her twenty-one-year career stint with the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd, where she started off as an environmentalist and left as the regional organizational effectiveness, change, and planning manager for Shell Africa in 2008. Currently, she is the MD of Insolitus Nigeria Ltd, an organisation and talent development consultancy, where she trains and coaches. This has provided her the opportunity to live her purpose as she is constantly meeting and sharing her passion for self-improvement with her clients particularly through her flagship personal accountability training. She also works with youths in her local church and through Act Right, an outreach organisation she founded for the promotion of leadership and personal accountability among the future generation. Her first book, Nuggets of Self-Development, was published in 2010. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria, and has a son.
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Nuggets of Self Development - Barbara O. Lawrence
© 2010 Barbara O. Lawrence. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
First published by AuthorHouse 12/28/2010
ISBN: 978-1-4567-1889-3 (e)
ISBN: 978-1-4567-1890-9 (sc)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010918691
Printed in the United States of America
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
For Tara, my son
Epigraph
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde
Foreword
Man was created to be master over the created order by God and to remain in the goodness implanted in creation. This mastery that man has, over and above all other creatures, makes him distinct and unique. Yet man finds it difficult to master his own self as far as his desires, ego, passions, appetites, wants, interests and such like are concerned.
There are varied reasons why man is unable more often than not to control or master himself. A man could command an army of soldiers and yet not have the iota of mastery over his own self. But it is amazing that some people are able to complete their absolute mastery by developing themselves for the challenges within them.
We have been offered this book "Nuggets of Self Development by a competent individual whose love for human formation is great. The pages are of small but really valuable insights, hence the name
nuggets". These pages contain simple day to day encounters that ought to be approached in a skilful way. They also challenge the reader to make some painstaking efforts to interiorize his external environment harmoniously and to exteriorize his internal self appropriately and more friendly. Professional suggestions and guidelines have been put down to help the reader practise and imbibe them at his pace while he maximises his ability to master himself. To be a master of yourself, you need to look inwardly at yourself and see how you can make it; it is more of a self-project.
The reader should not go through the book in so much haste, but rather as nuggets that ought to be taken one at a time since the book calls for a lot of practical things.
Rev. Father Paschal Aggrey
Preface
I really didn’t set out to write a book on Self Development. My book idea for the past five years has been on Personal Accountability, a concept that I have been passionate about since my days at the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd. So how did I end up writing this book? The short story is that I had a very colourful life at Shell – joined as an environmentalist, ensconced in Communications and left as an Organisation Development (OD) and Change manager after 21 years. I learned a lot from various sources and people, particularly during new assignments and I had to teach myself a few things as well. Putting all of these into action was part of my self development
journey.
Moreover, I had discovered some years earlier that my life purpose was to inspire people to be better than before. So setting up my own OD consultancy after Shell gave me a lot of opportunities to live my purpose as well as the space to start writing again – which was what I did as a journalist before joining Shell. A chance meeting with Frank Aigbogun a former colleague at the Vanguard Newspapers, Lagos and the Editor of the BusinessDay Newspaper, was the icing on the cake as he gave me the chance to write a self development column for the newspaper. The articles from my column gave birth to Nuggets of Self Development
.
I would like to acknowledge Frank for being the unknowing initiator of this book and Fr. Paschal for taking the time to carefully read through the manuscript and writing the Foreword. I would also like to thank those that have inspired me over the years to believe in the self development concept – particularly my parents, son, aunts, siblings, friends and all my loved ones! So am I still going to write that Personal Accountability book? Just watch out!
Table of Contents
1. Self Development: From A to Z:
2. A step a day makes the Journey
3. Coping with Change
4. Dos and Don’ts of a New Manager
5. Is Attitude Everything?
6. Motivation starts from within
7. How Leaders Motivate Employees
8. Path to Personal Accountability
9. The Time of your Life
10. Who is your mentor?
11. Networking Today
12. How Excellent is your service?