P.A.T.H. planning for leaders

​There are so many acronyms these days… so what is a P.A.T.H.? Very simply put – a path that you create with a facilitator that leads you to your chosen future. It represents a simple planning process called Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope, developed by Marsha Forrest, John O’Brien and Jack Pearpoint in the 1990’s in Toronto. I was very fortunate to be trained by Rosanna von Sacken from Canada as she facilitated me virtually through my P.A.T.H.

​As I write about my experience of working in the P.A.T.H. process, I was able to fully embrace the process as I was so clearly the focus person (i.e. the person leading the planning, always feeling  that the vision and the plan belonged to me) and that Rosanna was fully committed to supporting me as a person and my vision. I chose to focus on a short time period as I was anxious about hosting house guests for 10 days with several family celebrations and many people coming and going. In short, potential chaos in my world. I felt that this could easily have been a topic that the facilitator (Rosanna) might think was ridiculous. I was anxious about the upcoming hosting, however was well aware that many others would have taken this in their stride.

The initial visualisation was wonderful as I immersed myself in seeing in my mind’s eye how I wanted the 10 days to unfold; the initial arrival excitement, the party, planning our activities, trips to the beach with our grandchildren, our connections and gatherings.

As I spoke of the images and feelings I had during the visualisation, Rosanna captured these with images and words as my ‘north star dreams’. Her drawing was simple and assisted me to easily anchor the dream/vision.

Following the capture of the 'north star dreams', I developed 4 goals and Rosanna captured these in arrows on the P.A.T.H. We then stepped through what is happening now, what supports I would need, what I would need to strengthen and action steps moving me to implementing my goals.

The P.A.T.H. process ensured that I was well prepared and able to enjoy the 10 days with family. 

Given the P.A.T.H. process was so beneficial for me, I am now offering this facilitated process for clients.