My Ultimate Island Experience

The Island... Ahhhh! 

Insightful, inspiring, relaxing, and enjoyable. The island was a really great module for me. I have been a bit more busy than I usually am, but the island tested my ability to balance, prioritize and plan effectively. It gave a really good chance to re-energize and boost myself every single day and allowed simply sit back and appreciate the simple things! 

Challenge I: 'Focus'

I always considered exploring my island Dominica a bit more, in an effort to simply relax and meditate. I planned a tour with some of my friends and we journeyed almost across the entire island visiting some of the most pristine natural sites. On that tour, I spent most of my time alone, just focusing, observing, reflecting and appreciating every little sparkle of nature around me; the trees, the animals, the water, the paradise! I took this time to lay out and strategize a few of my long-term plans. I realized, that this gave me a really great level of self-care to truly understand the depth of myself as an individual and as a leader by extension. 

Emerald Pool- Dominica

Challenge II: 'Prioritizing- Vital few over Trivial Many'

This task required me to holistically look at the current progress of my organisation on various fonts, understand the true meaning of long term strategy and delegate trivial responsibilities to key team members with a proper agenda, as well as infuse passion in the team through group activities such as 'idea day'/'managers mind'/'creative thinking', etc., throughout the months and get the energy leveraged through completion of aligned tasks.

A few of members of my executive team

The benefits:

• First, it brought to my attention that running a successful and effective organisation is a team sport, and therefore, it is very important for all members of the team to understand their role as well as that of the governing body. 
• This aspect also gave me the chance to view my organisation in a single yet well-structured picture, in order to identify what and where the gaps are. 
• I was forced to develop the habit of effectively communicating and relaying information with members on devising long-term strategies and plans for the organisation.
• My team was actively involved in laying out plans and designing various practices and group outreach activities that would ultimately refine our workflow. 
• Since we took this team meeting outside of the normal, formal forum, a more enthusiastic certainty, confidence and passion got infused into our team structure all because there was a much clearer picture of where the organisation is headed. I saw a greater sense of proactivity and responsibility for their respective roles. 
• And last but most importantly, I certainly felt that every single member was further energized and optimistic about achieving realistic goals and reaching ambitious milestones through hard work, determination and teamwork. 

My experience while completing this challenge:

Honestly, I did not plan on or never even considered having an outing like the above mentioned, especially with my team, to carry out some of the plans had. Considering my busy schedule with school, work and the organisation, that was never on my list of things to even plan. However, i decided that i was not going to restrict myself or hold back on an opportunity to empower and re-energize myself and my team on such level. All in all, I was very appreciative of the fact that i got to get so much done, in a relaxing and serene environment, in my own thoughts and with the ones I work closest with!

Reflection on this module: 'The Island'

The module allowed me not just to cut out 20 minutes of my day for a month, to simply relax and appreciate some of the little things we take for granted, like self-care, but it gave me an entire different perspective on how I go about my daily personal and work life. It allowed me to relax, to be inspired, to appreciate, to take care of myself and those around me, to meditate, to slow down! Thank you very much for including a practical and relevant module of this nature, to remind us that there's more to our lives than work!

Appreciate the Simple Things!