Affirm and Assert Yourself

                The concept that I found really interested from this week is on page 212, about affirm and assert yourself. It talks about how important to affirm yourself.  I also learned that I am no less valuable, my preference is no less valid than others. We should respect and honor both ourselves and other’s needs. The principle of confirming people’s worth applies just as much to oneself as to others. Sometimes, we will not be able to meet all the needs in relationships, but it is also important to express our feelings to them. If we do not give any voices, there are no ways others can confirm us. The text also defined assertion, which is a matter of clearly and nonjudgmentally stating what you feel, need, or want. We can be asserted without disparaging others. We should also learn how people affirm themselves, and different ways to express their feelings directly or indirectly in order to communicate more effectively. 

Comfirming others

                I agree that it is always hard to confirm others when I disagree with them. Since we live in a huge society, it is very easy that we have different opinion towards things. In the session, Confirming and Disconfirming Climates from the text, I learned that all of us need confirmation to be healthy and to grow. In other word, we need confirmation to feel cherished and respected. There are few different levels of confirmation and disconfirmation. The first level is recognizing that another person exists, we disconfirm others at a fundamental level when we don’t acknowledge their existence. The second level is acknowledgment of what another feels, thinks, or says; if we disconfirm others, our responses will be tangential, irrelevant. And the strongest level is endorsement, it involves accepting another’s feeling or thought through the communication process. From the text, I also learn that disagreements can be productive and healthy. Sometimes, it is fundamentally disconfirming to have others ignore what we say and think.

fallacies

           After reading the last section of the chapter which discussed about fallacies, I can see there are many similarities within my life. When people express their feelings to us, we usually respond with a general statement. If we want to become skilled in listening and responding, we should not get into a perspective conversation. When people talked about bad things about their lives, they may not mean to let you help, but just want you to listen to them. The text has included six different fallacies which we normally encounter in our daily lives, perfectionism, obsession with should, overgeneralization, taking responsibility for others, helplessness, and fear of catastrophic. If we are taking too much responsibility for others, it is much easier for us to get into troubles. When people were talking about themselves, we better become a good listener and think before we respond. We also should not become helplessness, if there really is nothing that we can help, we should not be depressed neither.

identify your emotions

                The concept that I found really interesting this week is on page 185 talking about identifying your emotions. It is very important for a person to identify their emotions. Sometimes, your emotions will directly affect how people feel about you, so it is important to maintain a good attitude when you are having a conversation with others. Learning to identify emotions, then we can ignore our feelings and teach ourselves to notice and heed them. And also I really like the example from the text, talking about people sometimes feel both anxious and hopeful. Recognizing the existence of both feelings allow you to help yourself to fit it and to communicate accurately. If people are experiencing multiple emotions at once, it is easier for them to feel hopeless or even unclear about what they feel.  It is always hard to be able to identify our own emotions. We have to give mindful attention to our inner self in order to learn our emotions.

different emotions

                According to the text, there are some view points toward different kinds of emotions. For example, emotions can be defined as the perceptual view of emotions and the cognitive labeling view of emotions. The perceptual view of emotions let us express our feelings with a subjective perceptions shape, it also remind us on how our physiological reactions to external events. Different interpretations would lead us to define our emotions distinctly. In other word, how we see things directly affect how we feel. The cognitive labeling view of emotions is similar to perceptual view of emotions, the difference between them is the cognitive labeling view of emotions offers a better explanation of our personal experiences, it also emphasizes the role of language in shaping our appropriate emotions. In other word, people express themselves differently based on different personal experiences that have happened on them before. the cognitive labeling view of emotions make more sense to me, since it emphasized that different personal experiences would  change our view point on different cases. 

Adapting Listening to Communication Goals

                From the reading of this week, I learned few different reasons to listen. At first, we listen for pleasure, listening for pleasure does not require us to remember or respond. People also listen for information; we pay attention to gain information. We need to stay concentrated on the information and take as much as we can. In order to increase the efficiency of listening, we should also minimize noise in the communication. Sometime, asking the speaker to restate the message will help to understand. Another important technique for increasing retention is to use aids to recall, which are memory aids that create patterns for what just heard. We also need to organize the information that we just heard, and then understand it. Lastly, people also listen to support others, it is very important to be careful of expressing judgments. While we were listening our friend’s worries, we should care about their feelings. After we understand their perspective, we should express supports.

Listening is a 10 Part Skill

From the article by Dr. Nichols from 1957, I can see many skills that we can use in our live when we are communicating with someone. I am very surprised that an average person listens at about 25 percent efficiency without training. To improve the listening skill, it  is very important to make sure that the listener interested in the topic that you are talking about, but even if the conversation do not start with a good topic, a smart listener should pay attention to anything that is being said, because those messages may be useful in the future. In addition, if the listener wants to ask a question, he has to respect the speaker. The listener should also think thoughtfully before they start talking, and sometimes it is better to let the speaker finish even if the topic is very ridiculous. Good listeners learn from the speaker, and can be able to develop the speaker’s idea and make comments on it. Listening is a hard work, it is important that the listeners make eye contact or facial expression to the speaker in order to let the speaker know that if the listeners understand the topic or not. If the listener distract by someone, they will have the chance to miss the main point, so we should concentrate on the topic. Therefore, as a listener, we should respect the speaker and give feedbacks afterwards.