At about the same time I started to think about building an Internet website, I considered my personal strengths and resources. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make a list of all the things I have in my life, as well as the things I have learned and skills I can use. This could help me come up with new directions for my personal development. After I’ve started writing these things down, I decided to call it “Power Maps” as they outline my sources of power, and could also show me ways to turn my strengths into more powerful actions. In this brief article I will try to demonstrate how I do this, hoping you can do the same. I use my own Power Map as an example, so you also get a chance to know me better.
I began by writing down the major categories of things I do and am related to. Here is what I came up with:
- Family & Friends
- Places I know
- My Studies & Work
- Languages
- My Hobbies & Pastimes
Try to make your own list now. It doesn’t have to be similar to the one I made or even have the same logic or structure. Just try to think of the major things that make up the person that you are.
Next, I added more details to each major category – ending up with many of the things I consider to be my sources of power and knowledge. This is what it looked like by now:
- Family & Friends
- My mother, father & brother
- My cousins
- My friends
- Places I know
- Europe
- South America
- Argentina
- Chile
- Peru
- Bolivia
- Brazil
- South East Asia
- India
- Nepal
- Thailand
- My Studies & Work
- Human Resources
- Management skills training
- Thinking, Innovation & Creativity
- Philosophy
- Computers
- Myself as an employee
- Languages
- Hindi
- English
- Punjabi
- My Hobbies and Pastimes
- Swimming
- Board games
Seeing all that I have in my favor, I already started to feel stronger!
If you want to get the same feeling – take a few minutes to list many of your own sources of power.
Turning power maps into creative action
Now it was time to start thinking how I could turn all those resources into something I could make or contribute. In other words – come up with new and useful things I could do with all I have. What I came up with was consisted of things I did before and could do better or on a larger scale; things I haven’t done before but believed I could do; and some other creative ideas that just came up.
In order to distinguish these action ideas from the resources I already listed, I use an underline for the action items. I am sharing some of these with you:
- Family & Friends
- My mother, father & brother
- Help my brother pursue his dream
- My cousins
- My friends
- My mother, father & brother
- My Studies & Work
- Human Resources
- Management skills training
- Tools for planning
- Small Business Handbook
- Thinking, Innovation & Creativity
- Improved Memory Techniques
- Building a Personal Thinking Center
- Philosophy
- Computers
- Web programming
- Online & computer games
- Principles of development
- Review best games on the web
- Myself as an employee
- Languages
- Hindi
- English
- Translation tips
- Punjabi
- Learning tips
- My Hobbies and Pastimes
- Swimming
- Board games
- Playing tips
- Designing & Inventing
Now I had something I could work with. There were other things on the list – this is just to show you the general idea. I am sure that if you try to complete your own Power Map now – you’d have many action ideas.
Bringing it all together
With such a detailed Power Map, you can start looking for practical ways to harness all that power to interesting development possibilities. The strongest creative ideas would be those that combine as many strengths and action items as possible.
I truly hope this can help you become stronger, more creative, and ultimately happier.
Manhardeep Singh 