Personal Power Maps

At about the same time I started to think about building my own website, I considered my personal strengths and resources. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make a list of all the things I have in my life, as well as the things I have learned and skills I can use. This could help me come up with new directions for my personal development. After I've started writing these things down, I decided to call it "Power Maps" as they outline my sources of power, and could also show me ways to turn my strengths into more powerful actions. In this brief article I will try to demonstrate how I do this, hoping you can do the same. I use my own Power Map as an example, so you also get a chance to know me better...

I began by writing down the major categories of things I do and am related to. Here is what I came up with:


Try to make your own list now. It doesn't have to be similar to the one I made or even have the same logic or structure. Just try to think of the major things that make up the person that you are.

Next, I added more details to each major category - ending up with many of the things I consider to be my sources of power and knowledge. This is what it looked like by now:

Seeing all that I have in my favor, I already started to feel stronger!
If you want to get the same feeling - take a few minutes to list many of your own sources of power.


Turning power into action



Now it was time to start thinking how I could turn all those resources into something I could make or contribute. In other words - come up with new and useful things I could do with all I have. What I came up with was consisted of things I did before and could do better or on a larger scale; things I haven't done before but believed I could do; and some other ideas that just came up.

In order to distinguish these action ideas from the resources I already listed, I underline the action items. I am sharing some of these with you:




Now I had something I could work with. There were other things on the list - this is just to show you the general idea. I am sure that if you try to complete your own Power Map now - you'd have many action ideas.

Bringing it all together

With such a detailed Power Map, you can start looking for practical ways to harness all that power to interesting development possibilities. The strongest ideas would be those that combine as many strengths and action items as possible. Consider this website I have built, for instance - it combines my power at: English, Internet, Creativity, Management training, and more.

I truly hope this can help you become stronger, more creative, and ultimately happier. If you liked this article and the Power Map tool, you should sign up for my email newsletter and receive many more things - a new set of ideas each month; easy-to-learn creative tools; updates on new ideas and tools available on this website; and other crazy things I will come up with in time... - it's at www.best100ideas.com

Amir Elion is a management and innovation consultant and facilitator. He was a part of a group that developed a unique method for training diverse skills through the use of board games. He has a degree in Philosophy and General studies and an MA in organizational behavior. His website on creative ideas for business, workplace and personal use is at http://www.best100ideas.com