Order Continuous Professional Development

Order Continuous Professional Development
1 Take a separate piece of blank paper – as large as possible, preferably A3 – to
allow plenty of space to express your ideas freely.
• Write in the centre of your paper, ‘My strengths as a business and management
student’.
• Pause for a few moments before starting to write. Close your eyes, and take three
deep, slow breaths. Allow your mind to come inwards, away from thoughts of the
outside world. Feel your body sitting on the chair, moving gently with your
breathing.
• Remind yourself that this is a time to acknowledge the positive attributes that
have already helped you reach where you are now. Trust a part of yourself to
know what those qualities and capabilities are.
• Open your eyes. Stay centred, with your attention still mainly inside yourself.
Take up your pen and, without really thinking, write your ideas automatically,
expansively and continuously in strands emerging from that central theme.
• Do not censor any thoughts that come to mind – write down immediately,
without challenge, any positive factors that you sense have helped you on your
educational journey so far.
• Keep going. Do not stop until you have covered a lot of the paper with your
qualities, skills, capabilities and knowledge.
2 Once you feel that you have reached a natural conclusion to the clustering process,
take some time to look over your writing so you can absorb those affirming personal
truths. How would you describe the overall, positive feeling from reviewing this picture
of yourself? This may be a phrase or just a single word. Write that here:
Order Continuous Professional Development
3 Take a few moments to really absorb that feeling – breathe it in, slowly and deeply.
You can ‘anchor’ that by repeating the word or phrase to yourself as you continue
to breathe in the positive feeling. If you then repeat this breathing/anchoring
connection in stressful situations, you will find this can trigger that positive feeling
to help you act effectively at those times.
4 Some other questions you could ask yourself at this time are:
• What surprises have emerged for you from the clustering process?
• Which of your strengths will be especially important for you as a business and
management student over the next few weeks?
• How can you use these to best effect this week?