All components of this course, including our Thursday meetings, readings, assignments 1 and 2, have served as a springboard for creating this presentation. Also, this course was a great gift to me and valuable help to meet my most significant upcoming challenges and opportunities. I am thankful to this course's cohort members and instructor Patrick O’Neill. 

It was an unforgettable 9 weeks!

Recently, I have received a Canadian PR status, and incoming year I'm planning to move with my 14-year-old daughter to Canada. This change in personal and professional life looks scary and huge. 

The most challenging for me is:

When I look back on my journey through this course, I can confidently state that I'm a different person now than before this course. Now I have a clear vision of how to approach my challenge. This course's learnings and takeaways serve as a road map for the successful change and transition in my personal and professional life. 

Now I can meet my challenge with courage and creativity and think of it as a great opportunity and fun!

For me, being political means creating partnerships, alliances, and collaborations inside the organization’s team and outside of it. Organizations, families or groups of friends are always a coalition of individuals. Negotiations need to take place as a tool to fulfill personal and collective interests. To a lesser extent, I consider the political frame dominant in power. I believe in “soft power” and the power of debates. When I was a child, I was an athlete; I was trained as a figure skater. Since then, I have considered healthy competition a catalyzer of progress and innovation. 

The Political Frame is my dominant frame, and people see me as a person of strong will, determined, autonomous, and passionate. People often say that they can rely on me because I make things done. But what I have learned is that I have to be cautious and can loosen my passion and determination, empower others, and avoid burnout. Integration of the other three frames and mindfulness awareness will help me stay in balance. 

The Bolman and Deal assessment showed that the Structural frame is below the normative average. Nevertheless, I understand this frame as I’m a very disciplined and organized person. I studied law and worked in a law company but decided to escape this domain. There was a lack of possibilities to experience a variety of approaches at work. 

The Structural Frame serves us as a tool in strategic planning, initiates rational and analytical thinking, and “goes much deeper to develop versatile and powerful ways to understand social architecture and its consequences” (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p. 43). 

We look through the window of the Structural Frame when we need to set up procedures, structures, and rules of the game. As soon as this work is done, I am often bored with controlling the rules and procedures in the position of a leader. Therefore, I try to minimize the rules and balance the Structural Frame with the other three frames.  

I was influenced by:  

There are two important questions to which I’m going to answer in coming weeks:

I will feel relief and lightness after answering these two questions. The foreshadows of the answers sit deeply inside of me. It is difficult to say goodbye to many things and specially to your past  achievements. 

* Identify who's losing what 

* Accept the reality and importance of the losses 

* I will not be surprised at overreaction 

* Acknowledge the losses openly and sympathetically 

* Expect and accept the signs of grieving 

* Compensate for the losses 

* Define what's over and what Isn't 

* Mark the endings 

* Treat the past with respect 

* Let myself take a piece of the old way with me

I deeply believe that Commitment #1 will be smoothly realized if I continue and enhance daily mindful awareness practices. 

My ideal menu of mindful awareness practices will include:

What I have realized during the course is that I miss the sports routine in my life. Adding sport as a part of my mindful awareness practices will bring me to a wholeness and resilient mode. 

This is the core of starting my journey. First of all, I have learnt that there is a fundamental difference between Change and Transition. Change is situational, and Transition is psychological. Transition is a process in 3 steps that people need to go through in order to cope with the new situation brought by the change.

“Because transition is a process by which people unplug from an old world and plug into a new world, we can say that transition starts with an ending and finishes with a beginning.” (Bridges, 2009, p.2)

Three steps include 

Wanda Krause. (2021). Home. Wandakrause.com http://www.wandakrause.com

“Frames serve multiple functions. They are sources of new questions, filters for sorting essence from trivia, maps that aid navigation, and tools for solving problems and getting things done.” (Bolman & Deal, 2017, p. 23).

The environment is a complex entity; our lives are complex too. Therefore, I think it is essential to have the ability to integrate all frames in our practices and make an effort to look at the situations, challenges and transitions through different lenses. 

The completed Bolman and Deal assessment has revealed quite a balanced profile with the dominance of the Political frame. It has occurred that intuitively I used these lenses before, but now owing to the course and theories, I have theoretical evidence, and these frames have been articulated.

Also, the important learning outcome that all four frames are integral part of my personal and professional life. The frames co-exist, influence each other. My task is to incorporate mindfulness practices in my daily routine in order to lead my life with more agility and impact.