Its all about Life Management Skills

Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem

On the 26Oct, Its the second time I’ve attended LMS. Its only then I’ve actually understood what LMS module is all about. The topic we are on and discussed in class is understanding Self-Awareness & Self-Esteem and how we enhanced it.

We started off by doing a personal inventory based on the way you see yourself as, in terms of your characteristics and personalities. After that, we got to introduce ourselves using the given adjectives.
I am the lucky one to start the ball rolling. When I’m done, I actually observed how the others present themselves to the class. Through their body languages and they way they speak, it enables me to sort of gauge what type of person they are, the impression they want people to create on them, how much information about them that they are willing to reveal, whether they are more to the introverts or extroverts...etc

Self –Awareness is all about understanding yourself and how you see the world. It is important to everyone as it is essential for forming strong relationships. You will be more opened up to others and enhanced social sensitivity, thus improving your ability to communicate well with others.I feel that the attitude towards achieving goals or anything is important as it is the attitude at the beginning of a task that determines success or failure.

I can enhance Self-Awareness by doing reflections. Eg. Compare myself to others and seek feedbacks from my friends. Feedbacks enable everyone to change for the better. I believed that many people have ideas on how the others should change, and very few people have ideas on how they should change. We must learn how to face criticism in order to make us stronger. On the other hand, too much of it would do harm to our development of Self-Esteem.

Self-Esteem is how much we feel valued, accepted and thought well of by others, and how much we value and accept ourselves. It is important to have high Self-Esteem as it enables us communicate and relate better to others. Adapting to changes easily and respond to challenge without excessive fear or worry. Being able to face all failures, treat those mistakes as learning opportunities. And at the point where you really want to give up, asked yourself why you held upon for so long in the first place.

The negative beliefs in us affect our self-image and self-esteem. Our self-image is a mental picture of ourselves and is based on interactions with others and our life experiences. One’s negative thinking and beliefs can become illusions of truth.
I seriously believe that parents should not always critize their child, but to praise them when they have done the right thing, it plays a part by helping them to develop good self-esteem as they are still growing and forming their values and beliefs.

My personal experienced would be: I did badly for one of my exam, I did not receive a word of encouragement at all, and all I had was scoldings and being reprimanded. It makes me reflect on why I wasn’t praised when I’ve done well or being hardworking, yet being pin down with one mistake.
How others see us and how we see ourselves can have great impact too. We can help overcome all these negatives beliefs/thinking by reframing them into positive ones.

I can help enhanced my self-esteem through having positive thoughts as it helps to build confidence and boost my self-esteem. Tell myself that if I believe I can, and I’m halfway there. Change my negative beliefs. Eg. “I have to extremely nice to my friends so that they will stay by me.”
Tell myself, Friendship isn’t about whom you have known for the longest, it’s about who came and never left your side.

Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem is critical to my personal development and confidence. For those have low Self-Esteem, change it! Involve in activities that help you get in touch with your talents and take pride in your new skills developed. Have plannings before doing things might help achieve better results, leading to the increasingly building up of your Self-Esteem.websites visited :http://www.kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/mental_health/self_esteem.html


Time management…

Time flies… 24hours a day was more than enough for me few years back, how I wished time could have pass fast so much faster. But now, it seems to be that it was never enough enough for me, having so much work to do and so much are left undone…

I’ve tried to manage my time more efficiently by getting an organizer and planned out my time table so as to make better use of my time and to concentrate on the more important things to be done.I can be both a morning and night person depending on my level of energy for the day.

Majority of the time, I tried to complete my work in the morning as I believed that having enough sleep helps one to focus better.I learned that I should “delegate work I shouldn’t be doing or someone should be doing. But sometime when doing project work, I somehow feel that that others will not be responsible for my work and that the work produce might even be irrelevant. As such, I have no choice but to edit the work again and could not entrust the work to them.. To avoid double work, sometimes I would rather do it myself. Having to put in the effort just to complete a task, I would rather go the extra mile to t have a better quality work.

Coming to think of it, I realized that I’ve spend quite a lot of time watching movies/shows online, online chatting, watching television programmes and gossiping.( Gossiping is a girl’s nature)

I strongly agree that besides doing work, we must have sufficient time for leisure activities. Thus, I set goals for myself, knowing what I want to achieve and things I want to complete first. The way I handle my time and work reflects my attitude towards completing a task and the disciplined in me.

I feel that people who waste their time, “slacking” away shows the low maturity level in them. Whenever I see people who are diligent, smart.. I would definitely want to be like them. People who are really wide-read, knowledgeable has the charm in them.I would want myself to be more organized than before, better management in time and complete things that are beneficial to me.
I suppose all girls in Singapore wants to have a perfect figure and I’m not an exception. Perfect figure equates to being prettier and more confidence in oneself. Even the slimmest girl would still want to lose an extra pound. What I want to achieve this year is to be slimmer and get good grades.

I think everyone should be contended with what they owned now, making full use of their time to do something which are useful and beneficial to them.

Career wise, I would definitely aim high and reach for the highest. The impression others form on me is rather important as I want them to feel that I am capable and deserved the position I’m holding on to. The success of my career is as important as my life as it beholds my future. I know the type of life I want to lead and I must work hard to achieve it. And I know this is attainable.

I hope NgeeAnn will shape me into a better person, knowledgeable and one with good character. After my diploma, I would want to proceed to university.

The setting of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals are important as I do not want to be seen as being too ambitious or one with unrealistic goals.
I prioritize my task so that my energy level can be devoted to those that are more important.
When monitoring my progress, I often realized that I failed as I kept procrastinating and direct my attention to something else. I underestimated the time needed to spend on a task and delayed the next one…

In the process of doing projects, We had a little problem with time management and were rushing it near the deadline. Our goal is definitely to complete the project as soon as possible, making sure it can be attained and we set deadlines. We broke up the projects into smaller parts so that everyone can contribute and d not have to meet up so often due to different timing for classes.
However, no one follows the deadline, which leads to more problems.
Afterall, we did managed to handle the situation and I can say that the outcome of the project was satisfying enough though we could have been done so much better.

The way I handle and direct my anger…

Talking about anger management, different people has got different ways to deal with their frustration and one has to recognize and acknowledge that he/she is angry.

In my case, I pretty sure that I can get irritated easily and I try not to express them too quickly as it would definitely jeopardize the interpersonal relationship with my friends or whoever I’m frustrated with.whenever I faced situations that frustrates me, threatened my well-being or thinking that I’m unfairly treated, my muscles would tightened and I know I must do something to control my anger before it outburst.

The lesson I learned in anger management has helped me in dealing my anger as I recognized the thoughts that fuel anger and the different ways of expressing it. Other than expressing my anger immediately, I am taught how to control it and when it is beyond the limit, I’ll definitely outburst. The last alternative is to just walk away(withdrawal).

I often direct my anger at people who have no relation to the situation. And after that, I’ll feel really sorry, asking myself why I would do that and if I were to hold back my anger, nothing of such would have happened, leading to more conflicts with more people.

I was taught in secondary school that whenever you are feeling angry, count to 10 and you’ll calm down. This is to sort things out in your mind before saying anything that is hurtful or acting aggressively and the negative thoughts we had at that point of time can powerfully affect you mood and responses.

I know that when temper flares, I may make scathing remarks and I do not want to regret or feel bad for what I’ve said on impulse. Thus, I learned to express my anger responsibly and constructively to the right person.

My internal dialogue affects my thinking and emotions. I must change my internal dialogue to prevent any unhappiness when my temper flares.
A day passes whether you choose to laugh or cry, so shouldn’t you choose to laugh you day away instead.

Be a happy person, Let go of your anger…

“Listen” to what I’ve got to say…

This topic about understanding you and me, is all about the effectiveness of a listener and is the topic which I enjoyed most.Lesson started off with doing a listening self assessment to give a rough idea of what my strengths and areas I needed to improve on to be a good listerner.

There are external and internal barriers interfere with effective listening. External barriers include environment factors like loud noises and internal barriers, unlike external barriers are often self centered and take place within the individual mind and body.For me, I cannot focus with noises around and I have a tendency to wander off. I’ll fidget about when it is not the right temperature.

Listening takes concentration and effort and I got to be honest that when people is talking, the tendency of my drifting off is really high. I’ll filter out what is unpleasant to my ears, dreaming in my own wonderland and give general comments to show that I’m still listening.

Effective listening involves receiving and interpreting the speaker’s message as accurate as possible. To do this, one has to give the speaker full attention and concentrate on the message transmitted. And guess what? I just happen to fufil the criteria of ineffective listening and fit into every single style of ineffectively listening which is to interrupt the speaker, daydreaming frequently and to misinterpret messages.

After this lesson, I realized that something as easy as listening can have so much to learn about. Everything is like a direct application. I got to learn how to be an effective listener, be aware of my listening barriers.
Barriers that cannot be change can definitely be minimized. The percentage of retaining what a person said is a pathetic of 7% and 55% comes from body languages. I love to observe and thus, the body language of one helps me to stay focus on the message the speaker wants to convey.

Now that I’ve improved my listening skill, I believed that it will definitely benefit me in future.


My conflict management style…

Never did I know that conflicts can be categorized into different types. We had a project on conflict management and my team focus on interest-based conflicts. In interest conflicts, it is believed that in order to satisfy one’s need, the needs and interest of an opponent must be sacrificed. Interest-based conflicts may occur over substantive issues; procedural issues and psychological issues.

I can say that our project went pretty smoothly just that we had some clashes in our opinions. Fortunately, there is no major conflict. I found out that conflicts that are managed properly will have positives outcomes that benefit everyone.

For me, conflict helps me to improve my self-awareness. I can understand myself better, know what triggers anger, how I act in a conflict and the steps I took to resolve conflicts. It helps me to learn a great deal about myself. It improves my group’s cohesion as well.

I remembered that I suggested taking video clip to replace the role play in class for the “conflict project” as I find that taking video clip might be something special as everyone else is doing role play. Because of time constrain, my group member don’t seem to like my idea. I admit I was a little disappointed as well as angry because I don’t see a point why they do not agree with me. I maintained my tone and I tried to explain my points on why I want to do videoing with subtitles and stuffs. I volunteered to do the editing as they do not know how to and I stay up the whole night to touch up on all the work for the presentation on the following day. I managed to complete everything at about 5am.

I did not regret doing all these work nor blame anyone for not sharing the amount of work I had. What I got back in return is the smile of satisfaction on the work I’ve done from my group mates, and this is all what I need.

I’m rather satisfied with all my groupmates’s performance. I knew that they did put in effort in every piece of work given. But they do have to improve on the way they manage their time as we had lots of last minute work to do.

When dealing with conflicts, I would adopt the collaborating management style as my goals and relationship with others are highly important to me. Conflicts are inevitable and it helps improve relationship by reducing tension between two person because they are only satisfied only when the negative feelings are fully resolved. We need to have effective listening skills here as we have to understand what others’ have got to say, and then we can seek solutions that satisfy both party and at the same time maintain high quality relationship.


The fear in me…
I’m seriously surprise that something so emotional like “fear” can have so much to learn about. What I fear most is insects and animals!(please don’t laugh at me)

Many may think that that is not fear, probably just that I detest them. But let me tell you, you are totally wrong. I fear insects and animals to the extent that when they got near me, I’ll actually burst into tears like a cry baby.
I may look strong on the outside, but really timid in the inside. This actually tell people not to judge others by their cover.

LISTEN UP ALL ANIMALS AND INSECTS, PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM ME!

My fear driven behaviors would be the pounding of my heart rapidly, not able to breathe properly, stomach feels like it’s churning and I’ll stutter, stammer, or my voice shakes.I’ve always been trying hard to overcome my fear but I couldn’t, not at all.

I discovered that responses towards fear is influenced by the negative lessons drawn from experience, teachings or modelling by others like our parents and others. Another cause of fear is due to our negative thinking.

Taking me for an example, in the past when I need to do presentation, I’ll always think that I’m lousy and the way people looked at me is as if I’m not doing it right. The consequences would be that I’ll rush through what I have to say and get it done quickly.

I managed to overcome my fear of doing presentation and I feel the sense of satisfaction and it boost my self confidence.
I learned different ways of reducing physical signs of fear by doing deep breathing exercises, visualisation and through physical activities. I can also apply the changing of negative self thoughts taught in the topic anger management to overcome my fear.


Finally...

LMS is coming to an end soon. I discovered and learned many new things. Never did I know that there are things like barriers to listening, the different ways to express anger, managing of time which is so important that everyone must do it right, technique of setting goals, different conflict management styles that can be adopted and something so emotional like fear can be defined and written down in black and white...

All these thing seems to be easy, but there are so much to learn about. I believed that it will definitely benefit mi in future although i did not master all of it, but I definitely gained something out of it...