Uniquely You: 20 Things To Love About You

If someone were to say “You are indeed unique.” What does this mean to you? This column is to guide you through the process of making an appreciative inquiry into what makes you special, and create a more conscious awareness of many ways in which you express your uniqueness. Your practices are the many ways that you express your uniqueness. 


The first step is to list 20 qualities that are uniquely you so we can inquire into them. The purpose of this exercise is to connect with what is best and then to make it even better. I am not asking you to come up with 20 things that you or someone else thinks is wrong with you; neither of us feels inspired to create there!


We want to do something different. I am asking you to note 20 things that are great about you and then the ways you express these qualities.  Can you be comfortable enough to make the assumption that these qualities exist? What if you are doing at least 20 things right? Can you live with that thought? If they are there, are you willing to look into them? For example, you might write that you’re creative, generous,genuine, focussed and funny.


Proceed until you reach 20. Here are a few processes that can help you get there.

• Ask somebody 
• Brainstorm, and free associate 
• Focus on an image, plant, animal or fruit and write down the words that come to mind 
• Choose any five words and then substitute these for the qualities that ring true for you. 
• Perhaps the words to a prayer, a song or quotation come to mind. Write these down. 

Stay in the flow, and truly open your mind to this process. I encourage you to truly see the beauty that is you—and uniquely you. By now you are relaxing into this process of appreciating the authentic you and becoming increasingly comfortable. Notice how you are feeling differently already, notice how you are making the difference in your perception and experience. What is changing for you as you progress through this appreciative inquiry?


Now lets review your list. It’s probably a good guess that the majority of items on your list aren’t just physical attributes. You may have already noticed that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may have also noticed that you have inner qualities that you express in ways that are uniquely you.


We are now in an even better position to expand your list to include what it is about these qualities that makes you different and unique. The answer lays in the way you and only you practice these qualities. Practices are your ways of thinking, expressing, doing things and getting things done.


Now you are ready to continue to the next step which is to register each of these qualities onto an index card.


Once you have completed this, you will plan to create multiple opportunities to affirm and consciously appreciate your unique capacities. Carry these with you and put in places where you can connect to them easily.


You are different and you are similar. These special qualities will help you connect in more meaningful ways to yourself and to others. You will notice how others also hold these qualities in ways that are unique to them, similar yet different at the same time. We do practice what is in our awareness and you will find yourself sharing your experiences with others, projecting an increasingly creative and positive self-image. In other words, you will feel more connected, confident and empowered.


And it keeps getting better. Your growing awareness will not only continue to sustain you, it will also expand into all the areas of your life, personally and professionally. In this way, they form your unique Success Blueprint that will honour and continue to celebrate the authentic you. You will continue to tell an ever-improving story of how you made it, a story of appreciation and worthiness. Your experiences will continue to grow, to empower and to sustain you.

Explore, Play, Appreciate

Having written many academic and non-academic articles on Creativity and the stages of creativity, I am now working on making this topic more interesting and accessible to people of all ages and all walks of life.

I have written extensively on I-VOLUTION where I explain the 7 stages in creative thinking. These are:

1. Interest, Initialisation, Introduction
2. Interaction
3. Immersion
4. Incubation
5. INSIGHT, innovation
6. Integration (personal level or specific area)
7. Integration (globally)

Through experience in coaching and consulting, I have come to condense these stages into 3 steps. These are:

1. Explore
2. Play
3. Appreciate

I have found this new Creative Thinking Model can hold and transmit more information in less time - it's more efficient, effective and versatile.

I am currently writing a knol with the title "Possibility Thinking - explore, play, appreciate" to present a simple, fun and valuable exercise with wide application.

Change happens... Creative Change needs a helping hand

We all have learned and habitual ways of dealing with change. I propose a conscious awareness, a continual learning and application of creative thinking as a habitual way of living and being.

At its most simplistic level, I would define creative thinking as simply thinking. I agree with the adage that "A man is what he thinks about all day long".

We cannot not think. We can choose what we think about and how we think about these things. In other words, we can choose what to focus our attention on and how to focus this attention. You may have heard the saying "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I believe creative thinking is a way to see opportunity where opportunity seems not to be. Creative thinking creates options and opportunity where the driving intention is a desire to grow and expand one's potential.

We have unlimited creative potential and we can consciously choose and develop our own unique ways to drive our thinking and our creation and experiencing of our own personal reality.

To this end, I consciously look at ways in which creative thinking can be applied.

Life goes on... more creatively

The only constant in life is change. We have the choice and the creative potential to consciously embrace these changes creating successful and life-enriching experiences.

We all want to feel success and mastery in our lives and we all have the potential to achieve this.

Creativity workshops and coaching enables my clients to keep their focus on the things they want and off the things they do not want. I encourage a creative life-enhancing approach to the challenges my clients meet in the face of change.

Creative Connections is based on the assumption that focus is everything. Focus refers to the focusing of one's attention. Another popular term for this is consciousness or conscious attention. This concept can be taken from the one end of the spectrum where we speak of a simple thinking process to the other end of the spectrum where the more esoteric concept of creative consciousness is used.

Creative Change Coaching

My name is Aneesah Bakker and I am a Creativity and Transition Coach.

I coach individuals and groups on sourcing and using their creative potential for

• personal and professional writing - books, presentations, journalling...
• painting, drawing, doodling
• creative visualisation - using the imagination to visualise outcomes
• discovering their passions, strengths, talents...
• goal management
• creating change in their personal and professional life
• mastering change (loss, bereavement, expatriation, etc.) so it becomes a life-enriching transformation

As a professionally qualified Life Coach, Trainer and Consultant, my clients include artists, CEOs, company directors, medical specialists and other coaches.

In a nutshell, my collaboration is as a positive and tranformational coach.