Testimonials

Donna McGeorge

Author, Speaker and Facilitator. Global Authority on Productivity

Must-read to shake things up!

Courageous Invitations is a must-read for anyone looking to shake things up and be their best self. The authors take you on a journey of self-discovery and growth, with each chapter serving as a guide to help you get there. The book covers everything from finding your purpose to embracing change and even becoming a little bit “strategically selfish.”

This book is packed with nuggets of wisdom and activities that will make you think twice about the choices you make and how you approach life. It’s written in an easy-to-digest style that’s both inspiring and down-to-earth. If you’re ready for a change or just looking for a little push in the right direction, I highly recommend giving this book a read.

Anoka Balram

Chief Marketing Officer & Applied Design & Marketing Transformation Leader, Deloitte Consulting, Africa

Live a life of purpose

Courageous Invitations invites the reader to reconsider their approach to what it means to live a life of purpose. Rather than feel directionless around one’s purpose, this book explores the concept of starting to explore how one can attain the reciprocal contributions.

Achieving these goals in incremental steps could be purposeful in itself. Seeing that our purpose could change as we continue to re-invent ourselves, the quest for self-mastery never stops as the learning journey is continuous.

Thank you to the authors for sharing valuable examples and useful exercises to explore one’s own self-disruption journey into the art of the possible. It is always possible if we apply our minds and intentional energy. It is an inspiring read that makes you rethink about where to begin.

Vinolia Singh

Chief People Officer, AdCorp Group

Stretches our thought processes

Wow, what a remarkable read! We often consider disruption to be something that happens around us and never within this. This book really stretches our thought processes to disrupt ourselves from within using practical real-life examples that are easy to understand which many readers will resonate with. The simple guidelines on goal setting, measuring execution and the achievement are the pinnacle for every reader.

But it doesn’t stop there, the authors in their true spirit of making this a two-way process have generously made themselves available to the reader for further support. A must read if you want to be courageous and disrupt your inner being to live your best life and reach your full potential.

Firoze Bhorat

Chief Marketing Officer, Discovery Limited

Give yourself permission to dream bigger and think smarter

What is the point of having an innovative idea if you never let it see the light? What if you never give yourself permission to dream bigger, think smarter and make your mark in the world? This is the crux of Courageous Invitations—having the freedom to give yourself permission to be your best self and, in the process, encouraging others to do the same. Dr Jefferson Yu-Jen Chen and Anne Duggan generously share a lifetime of knowledge and experience to inspire you to “invite yourself to the party” and I am honoured to write the Foreword for such a valuable and insightful piece of work. A veritable MBA in book form.

Courageous Invitations sets out to help you find your audacious purpose and offers practical ways to set goals that lead to action. This book challenges you to question your intrinsic motivations – What’s holding you back? What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that can happen? What empowers you to embrace a new way of thinking about yourself and the world? The activities at the end of each section provide ample room for self-reflection and rigorous food for thought. Drawing on ancient history, cognitive psychology, literature, music, marketing, philosophy and modern-day phenomena like viral videos, Courageous Invitations explores the very nature of what it means to be crea- tive and to recognise opportunity where others see only problems.

Dirk J F Van Der Walt

Director & Co-Founder, WeBuyCars

The courage to fearlessly pursue your purpose

The opposite to faith is not disbelief, but fear. What Dr Jefferson Chen and Anne Duggan accentuate resonates strongly with me: the courage to fearlessly pursue your purpose and to appreciate what is uniquely you, the product of your own unique ampersand thinking; the unique combination of what you have been and what you are becoming in seeking and fulfilling your purpose may very well be a safer option and more likely winning bet than most other old ground ruts of old paths to power and perceived routes to so-called success.

Nay-sayers are the very same people who effortlessly pivot and meet your success after the fact with a resounding “I told you so!”. It is a courageous and fearless initiative that follows its own heart and healthy mind to prematurely identify new courses and new solutions to challenges, while the predominant opinion still has an outdated formula for its perception. But, exploration, innovation, and pioneering behaviours may be what many dream of achieving, and yet is not everybody’s cup of tea. The greater tribe is stacked like a chessboard with different kinds of which not all can be movers and shakers. And the best consistent outcome clearly comes from developing all the supporting pieces in unison, while preparing for a final strike.

Leadership and Leading is not the same thing, and all of us cannot be the head, we need teamwork and support, we need the combination of rational thinking as well as the freedom of dreaming and conjuring up visions of greater realities. The co-authors masterfully bring these elements together to challenge your mind into understanding how the process of innovation and leadership comes together to beat out new paths and better routes to new horizons, in ways that do not always correlate to existing institutional thinking, expectations and formal- ised thinking.

Thomas Kgokolo

Former CEO, South African Airways

Exceptionally researched book

Using the research experience gained throughout their careers, Dr Jefferson Yu-Jen and Anne Duggan provide an exceptionally researched book on goal setting, which incorporates inspirational stories of successful people pertinent to our generation. The greatest treasures in the book are found at the end of each chapter as empowering tools and self-enrichment exercises are given to assist read- ers in goal setting. At the present time, where mental wellbeing is consistently emphasized and talked about, companionship is provided throughout the book assisting readers with dealing with the emotions they will experience whilst reading the book. The tools and support provided in this book will immensely assist the reader in being courageous and thereby changing the destiny of ones’ life. Read this book and be transformed!