Week 10 D-3

One thing that I found interesting was the Supportive Facework. The book mentions that it helps reinforce the way the other is presenting themselves. It talks about how people want others to like them, encourage them, consult, respect, include, reward, appreciate, and ask them for their inputs. The is a list of 5 things that you should ask yourself when in conflict. They are:

1.       Do I try to make the other feel important?

2.       Do I try to make the other look good to other people?

3.       Do I try to make the other think that they are winning?

4.       Do I try to make the other feel secure?

5.       Do I try to make the other believe that I am honest and trustworthy?

You should always try to support others so that they don’t feel put down.  Supporting others in conflict can help make it easier to overcome the conflict that is going on. Also it helps the other person feel better about dealing with conflict. I know that when I’ve been in a conflict I try to not put the other person down and work together to agree on things.

Week 10 D-2

There was an event in my life that left it difficult to forgive the other person. It happened with one of my old bestfriends. She and her boyfriend(who I have known my whole life, great family friend) broke up, I tried to stay out of it and be friends with both of them. Her ex/my friend still and my boyfriend were hanging out, and the girl had called her ex and was trash talking me.  The call happened to be on speaker phone and my boyfriend hear the whole thing. The girl/my supposedly bestfriend was making up lies about me and saying how I was a horrible person.  After she had said that about me, it made it extremely hard to forgive her, I actually have not fully forgave her. The book talks about best friends and a truth bias towards them, so when that was broken it made me really upset because she tried to lie about the conversation that took place between her and her ex and her trashing me. So our relational transgression was violated in the truth bias aspect.

Week 10 D-1 Facebook

I am a member of Facebook, and I think that I present myself in a positive way. I don’t give people a false impression of myself, or make myself to be someone that I am not. The impression that I hope people will get about me from reading my profile is that I am a nice, adventurous person, and someone that sticks up for others.  I think they will understand that I am laid back, and a genuinely nice/sweet person. I don’t think there has been times that someone has posted something to my profile that I wish they hadn’t. I don’t have anything negative on my profile, and I have lots of family members that are “friends” with me, so I also don’t have any negative/inappropriate pictures.  I will usually ask friends if they are okay with me tagging them into pictures, instead of just posting them. I know that I like to be aware of the pictures of me that go online, so I am sure to ask others first. I think this relates to conflict and communicate by me communicating well with others to prevent any conflict. I think that by me not having anything negative of myself or others, it helps prevent any conflict that could arise. I am very careful with what goes online/facebook because I would rather not deal with conflict that often comes up from that site. 

Week 9, D3

One of the concepts that I found interesting was in Chapter 7.  The book talks about developing a Playful Spirit. A Playful Spirit is something that you create in your mind, to change your attitude towards life in a way that enables you to lighten up. It’s a way to help manage distress. The book gives some examples of techniques that could help you. A few that I found that I actually do were in the list. I never knew that what I was doing to help become less stressed was actually playful spirits, and I would have to agree that they really do work. A few that were listed are: (pg 128)

-Don’t blame yourself for everything that goes wrong or doesn’t pan out.

-Look for situational factors that you may learn to accept rather than fight against.

-Ask youself: Am I happy right now? What can I do now to be happier?

-Learn to say “No”, without feeling guilty.

-Take on a new role, which is more enjoyable than the present one.

-Do something you can succeed at, especially after failing something else.

These are just some of the ones listed, there are a few more as well.  I have found the first technique to be extremely helpful to myself.  I have learned to not blame myself for things when they go wrong, and it has helped me distress.

Week 9 D2- Anger

 I find myself expressing my anger in a calmly way. I won’t usually blow up, unless it is in front of my parents or brother for something that made me extremely mad, but that rarely happen. I tend to be more calm about things and know to not jump to conclusions.  I will talk to the person that Im mad at or calmly discuss a situation that made me angry. I find that my doing this, things get resolved quicker and easier. If someone were to make me angry, and if I were to blow up at them, then that just makes the situation worse and they feel uncomfortable. I wouldn’t want to make them angry and have two angry people. That would defeat the purpose of solving an issue.  I will express my anger so a person knows how I feel, so they can avoid it for future references.  I have just not expressed my anger at all, and that ends up making me more uncomfortable, so I decided that I should always express it in a nice calm way so that it doesn’t happen again. 

Week 9, Stress

At times, my work load and school load can leave me stressed. I try to manage everything in a timely order, but I do find myself overwhelmed. I can apply the “three solutions” to improve how I feel about my job and school. The first solution is talks about how we approach our tasks and it should be with a positive attitude, since that plays an important role on the level of stress we feel about them.  I tend to put things off since I do view homework as a negative thing, and I should change my views on it to be more positive. As towards work, I’m a nanny and depending on which family it is for the day/night, I can already have a positive attitude for it. Most of the time I do have a positive attitude towards work, since I view it as making money and with that money I can do fun things. The second solution talks about, viewing work as a game, and a type of play. The author does mention that we need to take ourselves less seriously and have fun with it and it can help with the stress. I do believe that to be true, cause having to much stress can lead to greater risks a person might face. If you loosen up about your job and enjoy what you do, then it will be less stressful. Same with school, if you study what you like, then it would be looked at so negatively.  The third solution is integration, and that one needs to understand that joys and pain can be found in the same play, but both are valued, (pg 130). To me, it makes me think of a love hate relationship.  For work, this does play a role for me. I do feel rewarded and the joy of things working with kids, but at times it can be frustrating and hard when they don’t follow the rules or backtalk.  But after reading the “three solutions”, I do believe I can apply them more to be less stressed.