Question-Week ending Sunday 05/11/03:
Regardless of your current age, take a moment to reflect back on your entire life. How well would you say you have taken advantage of the Personal Development Opportunities (PDO) that were within your reach? Please read our Poll Commentary before taking this poll.
Pre-Poll Commentary:
Our new poll series beginning today will deal with PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES (PDO) throughout our lifetime. In the following weeks, we'll be discussing the many different PDO's that have been available to us at various stages in our lives. For the purpose of clarity, we will define a PDO as any opportunity to grow and enhance your life in a positive way. We'll also discuss why it's important to take advantage of PDO's throughout our lives.
For instance when we were eight or nine, we may have had the opportunity to take piano lessons. Perhaps we passed on this opportunity and still regret it to this day. Or perhaps at age 19, we decided that one year of college was enough and dropped out. Finishing our studies may have changed the entire course of our life. These are just two examples of the many opportunities we'll be discussing during the next eight weeks of polls.
Obviously, everyone is different and we all have had different opportunities during our lives. We'll discuss many examples as well as why some people take advantage of them and some pass. We'll poll our viewers each week to see how well they believed they have capitalized on the opportunities presented at different stages in their lives.
The schedule for this series will be:
- PDO Introduction – Poll Starts Sun 5/04
- PDO between the ages of 7-12 – Poll Starts Sun 5/11
- PDO between the ages of 13-19 – Poll Starts Sun 5/18
- PDO between the ages of 20-29 – Poll Starts Sun 5/25
- PDO between the ages of 30-39 – Poll Starts Sun 6/01
- PDO between the ages of 40-49 – Poll Starts Sun 6/08
- PDO between the ages of 50-59 – Poll Starts Sun 6/15
- PDO for ages over 60 years and Summary – Poll Starts Sun 7/13
I believe it's important to reflect back on our lives to learn from our experiences. Being a student of our own past, helps us to plan better for our own future. It also helps us to be better teachers, parents and grandparents. We may be able to help our loved one's to take advantage of opportunities that we regrettably passed on. I'm sure we all agree that individuals learn best from their own experiences. However I have found that my own children began practicing what I preached many years after our discussions. I was wrong to believe they were not listening to me at the time.
We hope you take part in this entire series and enjoy the knowledge and insight gained.
In this week's poll, please vote on how well you believe you have taken advantage of the many opportunities you had for Personal Development during your entire life - to this day.
This poll will end on Sunday 05/11/03, when the results will be displayed.
Results:
- 37% voted taking advantage of lifetime PDO's Good=85%
- 30% voted taking advantage of lifetime PDO's Very Good=90%
- 22% voted taking advantage of lifetime PDO's Fair=75%
- 09% voted taking advantage of lifetime PDO's Poor=65%
- 02% voted taking advantage of lifetime PDO's Excellent=95%
Post-Poll Commentary:
From this poll, only 2% of our respondents scored themselves as Excellent (95%), with regards to taking advantage of Personal Development Opportunities thus far in their lives. While less than a third or 30% scored themselves as Very Good (90%). There's a lot to be learned from these numbers.
My first impression is that we have all passed up on many opportunities that we could have capitalized on. Obviously, we cannot take advantage of every opportunity that is presented to us. However, during the weeks ahead, we hope reflect back in time by listing and sorting out the the oppotunities we may have had to grow. By discussing these opportinities, perhaps we can help ourselves as well as our loved ones choose better in the future.
This should be a fun series and I hope you will take part in making it one of our best ever. Enjoy!