2014 TO 2015 - Exploring Personal Language in

FRAME ARTIST

Long before I had ever conceived of Iterative Autonomy, I used a simple app on my iPad called Frame Artist (normally for photo collages) to begin capturing the words and phrases that were standing out to me as true descriptions of my strengths & interests. I know I put "What does my ideal job look like?" as a prompt in the middle, but truly I was just trying to feel out any words that I felt really connected to. When I noticed that a word was coming up repeatedly or that something really felt particularly good (the feeling inside was what I call "little kid happy"), I would add that sparkly star background to it. Eventually I started to notice that things were connecting, so I added the yellow lines and arrows that began to tell a truly authentic and increasingly nuanced story about myself. 

I added to & adjusted this template for over a year and looking back on it now, it's still incredibly accurate. The only thing that has changed is that I've gotten even more specific & clear about the many facets of my life and I know that even if some of these things do change, they will still be true to who I was at that time. As much as I may have wished for it at times, I've learned that there's no subtracting when it comes to your life story, only adding & reframing.

2015 to present - Sampling Concepts & Activities from

EXISTING SOURCES

Early on in my iterative autonomy process it was extremely helpful to connect with books, models, online classes & other resources that laid out well-defined processes for exploring my autonomy. Two of my favorite & most influential resources were Brené Brown's online class on her old CourageWorks website and David Allen's Getting Things Done concepts. David really helped me to organize the overwhelming amount of information & ideas in my head, not to mention the physical stuff in my life. This is definitely still an evolving practice for me and I go back to his ideas often to cull & reorganize my internal & external space. Also around this time, having already fallen in love with Brené Brown's ideas & research methods, I joined a few friends to meet up regularly and discuss our progress in her online class with guided activities for two of her books, Daring Greatly & Rising Strong. Exploring & revisiting these kinds of models has only gotten more valuable through the years, because I feel increasingly motivated to take what works for me at the time and leave what doesn't.

2016 to 2018 - EXAMINING MY PRIORITIES ON A

BALANCE BOARD

As I started to gather more understanding & awareness about my values and the areas of my life that I wanted to put more attention on, I created what I call my balance board. Those closest to me know that I LOVE whiteboards and making several of these decorative whiteboards is one of my favorite DIY projects to this day (I bought mirrors and picture frames and then painted them with several layers of metallic paint and then whiteboard paint). I call these "In Sight In Mind" Boards (as opposed to out of sight, out of mind) because I use them to display important information in a place that I will see and be inclined to interact with it regularly. I've changed up the elements of these ISIM whiteboards dozens of times, but I keep the core idea of balancing & tracking my priorities and new practices.

2016 to present - REVIEWING MY PROGRESS IN

VOICE RECORDINGS

Eventually, I started to realize that I can voice my thoughts & ideas often much better and certainly more quickly than when I tried to write or sketch them out. This was surprising to me because I had always thought of myself as more visual & tactile than auditory. Fortunately, at this time I was also learning more about growth mindset and about how nuanced we can all be when we start digging beneath generic definitions & boxed concepts. So I played around with a bunch of ideas for tracking my progress and was open to the idea that I could discover anything about myself as I explored.

I found that listening to myself tell me where I was a few weeks back was actually an incredible way to perceive my growth & progress. I used the Voice Memos App which was already on my phone, but any recording device will work. I tried to do this weekly for a while, but for me that was a bit too frequently, so I focused on bi-weekly recordings for a while, then monthly, and now I find that once every couple months is best at this point. Along the way, I added in a journal component to bullet point the ideas I had while listening to the last recording just before using it to record my next one. After a few years, I shifted to a plan of putting it in my calendar every month with the goal of recording at least once a quarter. This seems to be the most balanced practice for me now and I can honestly say that I could see all of my other practices go by the wayside before I’d give up on this one.

2017 to 2018 - PULLING IDEAS TOGETHER INTO a

ME BINDER

A small binder where I printed & combined the key elements that were rising to the top in my personal autonomy journey. Here are some examples of what it contained:

• Values

• Joys/Interests

• Strengths/Skills

• Abilities I Want to Practice

• Gold Stars (High level personal descriptors)

• I Am... (Truths about Me)

• GEMS (Ideas that feel true, broadly)

2017 to present - Organizing EVOLVING Ideas On

TRELLO

Seriously, I should just leave this description as "TRELLO - for all the things." I find this simple tool so incredibly useful & versatile. Someday perhaps I'll put together a more extensive list of all the ways I use Trello to improve my life, but truly it's so easy to use, that I’d suggest anyone interested just go ahead and set up a free account & explore. It's very intuitive and is basically a way to create searchable, electronic pin boards, that you can make your own. I started by adding & organizing ideas as they came to me and now I've hit a period of refinement where I'm condensing a lot of my ideas and simplifying my lists & boards.

This is definitely a space where an iterative/growth mindset comes in handy. I like being free to add any idea I want and then delete or refine it whenever I need to, but fair warning with this method, there were times when certain boards or lists became overwhelming and that was my prompt to review & simplify those ideas (often times just pulling the most useful bits into a fresh board). There were lots of times when I wasn't convinced I was getting anywhere, but a year or two into using it, the value became crystal clear and it continues to feel full of endless potential.

2018 to present - Gathering GEMS in a

TREASURE CHEST

This is by far my favorite capture vessel. It represents the kinds of things that I like to do for myself to keep the joy & play in my life. Treasure, treasure chests, gems...these things are all just inherently fun and that brings a much needed levity to the often times deep & heavy process of practicing iterative autonomy as an adult. 

At first, I had a hard time making myself write things on the gems. It was that situation where the whole thing looked really nice and my recovering perfectionist was having a really hard time deciding the perfect thing to write on a gem. If I had this understanding up front, I think I would have used paper that didn’t feel so precious to get started, just so that I could have written simple things (like those on my frame artist above) and felt more free to change them.

At this point, I’ve added the practice of adding new gems into my quarterly routine & then annually I look at each gem and decide if it’s still true (it usually is), make any changes and then add any new understandings as a new gem. The whole process takes about 30 minutes. I’ve also created a digital gem template & cut out a bunch of blank gems, so that I won’t be afraid to use them and I use any hesitation as a reminder that knowing myself is more valuable to me than a few pieces of fancy paper.

2018 to present - Displaying Crafted Images on a

FRAMED CORKBOARD

My current pride & joy! This is the accumulation & design of about 10 years worth of self-exploration and here are the 3 things I can attest to about it at this point:

Not a One Time Thing |  I would never have been able to create this in one sitting. This was truly iterative autonomy. Each element on this board is something I created by iterating on many different versions of each topic and integrating them over the years. However, when I was ready to pull this together, it only took a few days & now I’m able to update it annually in a few hours of review.

Powerfully Authentic |  This is the best representation of the core components of my true self that I have ever had. Early on in this process, I felt incredibly unstable in my sense of self and lost to my true identity. Now, whenever I doubt my progress, I look at this board and I know that I have established a truly autonomous foundation that can never be taken away. When I say that an outcome of iterative autonomy is having a touchstone, this is what I’m thinking of.

I Will Never Stop |  Iterative Autonomy creates forward momentum. Once I started to explore who I am and what really drives me, it was hard to be satisfied with many of the situations & circumstances that I had created unintentionally for my life. So I started slowly in my own direction, committing simply to listen to my own voice and to own each decision that I made moving forward (so hard, so worth it). At this point, though I definitely still struggle with self doubt, I have the increased confidence & peace of mind that comes from knowing that I am actively pursuing & defining my own identity.

*Full Disclosure: I have an AMAZING husband and I was lucky enough to meet him pretty early on in this journey of Iterative Autonomy. I had learned a lot about the kinds of relationships that I no longer wanted to have and I had learned just enough about myself & boundaries to clarify up front just how many gauntlets he was going to have to cross if he really wanted to keep hanging out with me. Like a lot. So so many. Anyway, that's a long story and our relationship is one of those things that I could write an entire book on, so for now, my point is simply this: I did not do this alone. Autonomy is not independence. It is very much about connecting with people (& everything else) and discovering who you are in relation to them. So though I'm not in any way suggesting that you have to be partnered up with some kind of perfect human in order to do justice to your iterative autonomy, I AM saying that we all need to find our peoples. Yes, people with an "s". You are more than one thing and you will benefit from connecting with more than one genre of person or group to meet all of your needs. As you begin your journey, look around for the people you want to emulate the most and try to bring them & others like them in a little closer. And while you’re at it, consider leaning away from those who don't represent the kinds of relationships you want to build in the future. Then EXPLORE! And know that no matter what you do, you are going to find people that you connect with and others that you don't and endless variations of everyone in-between, but simply by exploring mindfully, the one person you are certain to find is you.