Interpersonal Reflection Essay

Interpersonal Final

"The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are. The second greatest is being happy with what you find."- Unknown. I have learned so much this year alone and taking an interpersonal communication class has broadened my view of myself and others. I am going to take you on a journey of what I learned and what I am continuing to learn. First I have chosen four chapters of the book that I think I have developed and learned the most from. From these chapters I picked the concepts and the theories that I have revised within myself. Starting with chapter two Considering Self, Perceiving Others, Experiencing and Expressing Emotions, Managing Conflict and last but not least Relationships with Family Members. I think that

I learned that I thought, that I had more Self-awareness (chapter two) then I actually do. I always thought that my self-awareness was good until I realized what it really was. Self- awareness makes you ask the question who am I? allowing you to view yourself as a unique person and to reflect on your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. I realized that I had a lot of learning to do. For example; when I was in high school, I thought that the reason I didn't do well was because of the hard ships that I was going through but in reality it was because I wasn't aware that my ability to work hard and study was slacking. I had to learn how to work ahead and plan a schedule of some sort in order to stay organized. I learned that my Self-esteem (chapter two) which is the overall values, good or bad, that we assign for ourselves. is very low. This surprises many people, I have always been told that I am a good optimistic person, but unfortunately all I saw was my flaws and problems making me have very little self-esteem. However, through this year and my classes I gained two things that improved my self-esteem very much. Those two things include leadership and confidence, for example; I am the student leader and advisor for my alternative high school, I gave a speech to our congressmen and the press to share information about my alternative high school and I help students achieve small things like

The first lesson that was hard for me to realize I needed to work on was Avoidance (chapter eight). I thought that I never avoided conflict, once I opened my eyes to what avoidance actually is, I realized I did it a lot. For example, with my coworker who constantly likes to mediate situations, I avoided the conversation with him to tell him how I felt because I didn't want to create a conflict with him. I finally did talk to him about it because I didn't want to avoid it any longer. Unfortunately he didn't think that he did that all the time so the conversation did not change the fact that he still does it, but I know now to not avoid conversations with him. The next thing that I realized with myself is I compete a lot, with a lot of people. I like to be in control so I learned that I don't need to be competitive with everything that I can be in control without trying to compete with people. That control factor of myself also brings my next concept of Power Currency (chapter eight) which is a resource that other people value, I used to think that it was bad for me to be the bossy control