Aspiring Leaders’ Forum ~ Day 4

25th July was the last day of the Forum. The organizers thanked everyone for coming and delegates shared their experiences of the Forum. The final guest speaker for the conference was Jock Cameron, a sought-after motivation speaker to young people. He co-founded the National Student Leadership Forum on faith and values which is held in the Australian Parliament every year.
The ideas and inspirations behind the founding of the Aspiring Leaders’ Forum in NZ comes from the very similar forum in Australia. Several NZ delegates attended the Australian Forum and decided to establish on in NZ.

Jock Cameron:
•Being able to continue to believe in a particular goal acts as a fuel for the person to pursue that particular goal that they have in mind

•Static people are people who cannot change, dynamic people are people who can change. In order to change, the values of the person must change
After people attend Forums, they experience the “2 week rule”. People are very motivated and inspired for two weeks, but after a while, they start to lose that motivation. How can we maintain this motivation and drive to change ourselves and achieve our goals? If we follow the seven steps of change, then we can achieve anything.

• Seven steps of change:
o Cognition: come from the mind, it’s awareness. One needs to be aware of people, self and the world around them
o Desire: until one has the desire to change, one can then change. Desire is fundamentally affected by pain. Being in this forum also creates desire
o Decision: life is based on decision. Decisions being made sets off events that make life the way it is. Everything is hinged on decisions.
o Declaration: to externalise decisions, one must crystallise the decisions to beyond the thoughts of the mind. Declaring gives life to decisions and pushes people to work at it for real
o Practice: taking time with consistent practice to create new patterns of action. Unconscious incompetent, conscious incompetent and unconscious competent
o Support: we are not designed to grow and change by ourselves, but we are designed to do this with others
o Persistence: one must be persistent, not afraid to give in to adversities and just keep trying. Just because there is a voice in your head holding you back, it doesn’t mean that it is true
•As Gandhi says: be the change that you want to see in the world
•Jock Cameron: Changing the world begins with changing yourself. Once you’ve changed yourself, then you have already changed the world.

The four day Forum successfully concluded, and after embarking on a journey of self discovery through self re-evaluation and reflection facilitated by group discussions and seminars, the aspiring leaders discovered their potential and learnt the necessary attitudes, skills and methods to transform themselves into successful leaders. The Temple delegates expressed their gratitude to the Venerable Abbess Manshin, Venerable Juexi and the Temple for nominating them to attend this rare and privileged Forum, and commented that they had learnt a lot from it. The Temple delegates also expressed that what was taught at the Forum had already been taught by the Abbess, and the Forum helped confirm their faith in what the Abbess had taught them, after seeing so many successful leaders who followed those principles taught and used by the Abbess make such a big difference in society.