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Who I Am and Who I Am Becoming

Who am I and who am I becoming? We must first know who we are to decide what it is we want to become. After 17 years I feel like I know who I am, so the question remains, who am I to become? Tony Robbins said, “Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.” So I only hope to become something more by bettering myself each day so I can be able ‘to give something back’. So who am I? I am the daughter of Shane and Lori, I have four brothers, and I am a high school student. Some of my hobbies are soccer, basketball, softball, tennis, swimming, camping, hunting, hiking, fishing, reading, playing the piano and violin, running, riding bikes, hanging out with family and friends, and eating. I like food, sports, shopping, and making people happy. What am I trying to become? My goals include having my own family, receiving a Master’s degree, and living a long and happy life. My dreams include but are not limited to being in four places at once, building a home for the needy and poor in foreign countries, inspiring and moving others, traveling the world, locating 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, and drinking blue Gatorade out of a Windex bottle while walking down the street. But I really do want to be an inspiration to others. Who am I? I am someone who is hoping to reach my goals and dreams and one day be something more. So how do I get from what I am to what I want to become? How do I change dreams and ideas into a reality? Well first I make sure the Windex bottle is really clean, then I take the Gatora… ? No, I make a plan, I break it down into simple steps and write them down. I get my hopes not just in my mind but on a piece of paper where others can see. I look at the examples from the past, good or bad. I understand what helped them get through an obstacle, or what created the bump in the road. I set my path and try to follow it. So who am I? I am someone who is trying to reach my dreams; I am someone who is trying to be something more. Once decided on my course of action, I resolve to stick to it. Trials will come up, hopes will fall down. Discouragement and doubt is possible but determent and dissuasion are not. I will not forget my goals or my tenacity for them. I know that it is ultimately up to me to choose my attitude and work ethic and whether or not I do my best. And in the end, as long as I do my very best, I will be who I wanted to become. So who am I? I am someone who is going to reach their goals, aspirations, and ambitions. And I am going to give something back by becoming something more.

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The Era I Lived In

Personal life stories of a weight loss coach helping simplify health and wellness to create a better life.

Who Am I and Who Am I Becoming

It’s the time of the year when I can be proud of having survived the year gone by despite all it brought my way.

I’m brimming with the hope that the new year shall be the BEST year of my life.

This is why I’m confident that before I move ahead in 2019, I must invest some time reflecting on who am I and the person I am becoming.

While I spend time reflecting all through the year, this is particularly the time when I bare my soul and be brutally honest about myself, my expectations and the life I’m hoping to create for myself in the days ahead.

Keeping in tune with my thoughts in the new year, I have chosen ‘Growth’ as my word of the year for 2019.

It has more to do with the person I am striving to become, continuing with the foundations I laid in the past year.

I want to invest more time and energy into taking actions, to grow emotionally.

To take more risks.

Be prepared to make more mistakes and step out of my comfort zone where I spent 2018.

To be a better version of who I’m today.

This year, I wish to grow to be human enough to be, well, enough.

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” - #MichelleObama #quotestoliveby #theerailivedin

♥ More Mindful

I started 2018 with the determination that I shall lead a more mindful life .

A life where I’m well connected to my thoughts and my instincts. Where I’m paying full heed to the murmurs of my body besides the surroundings I am a part of.

I decided to practice mindfulness in a way that best suited me.

Mindfulness is believed to cast a magical spell of calm and control over our lives.

I haven’t been successful at meditating religiously because in the chaos of daily life, acting from a place of stillness all the time feels rather futile or worse, almost impossible.

However, I have come to believe that I have the ability to mould the unpredictability, the unending chase for perfection to achieve desirable outcomes.

I am working to accomplish it in a way that I can be at peace, be relaxed and not churning unpleasant emotions when life chooses to take its natural course.

This has been a BIG win for me.

Mindfulness for me has been about being more focused on what I’m doing.

Cutting back on distractions (both online and offline) has been helpful. And the best bit was, over time, I stopped craving for the distractions that once served as a relief from the stress of doing the tough, challenging tasks that demanded my full attention.

Mindfulness has made me pay more attention to whatever I am doing, even if it was painting with my daughter when I was least inclined to participate.

Being fully present at the moment without the constant worry of what else I could be doing in that time has bestowed my mind with a sense of relief.

Being mindful about where I invest my time, has helped me step out of the autopilot mode that has been thus far pushing me to carry on with the same mental ruts, day after day, for the better or worse.

♥ Journalling keeps me focussed

I have been a big fan of journal writing since childhood. And you can spot me raving about the benefits of writing a gratitude journal on the blog.

I discovered a life-changing benefit of writing my thoughts down on paper ~ Clarity and focus.

Every time I chose to brain dump on a piece of paper or in my journal, I had a written draft of my train of thoughts for future reference. This not only helped me assess my progress but also served as the much-needed source of motivation when inspiration fizzled out and I needed to revisit the WHY I had started something in the first place.

This is how contrary to procrastinating I am slowly becoming an action taker.

I’m becoming a person who is slowly learning to get results from the tasks I had long been wishing to accomplish but had left them half done in the past.

♥ All drama is the product of the stories I choose to tell myself

This lesson didn’t come easily to me.

It took me a long time to come terms with the master storytelling skills of my mind. I was amazed by the stories my mind spun in a matter of seconds that were purely based on assumptions and only added to my fears, biases and grief.

Ever since I started repeating this understanding to myself, the quality of my life has changed dramatically.

I feel like I am in much better control of my life and emotions.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you might have noticed how some of my earlier anecdotes took a blaming tone. I’m not sure about you, but when I reread my older posts, I have felt so on more occasions than I can count. I blamed myself, my circumstances and the people around me for my sufferings.

Though today its an altogether different story. I feel like a changed person.

Last year, I invested a lot of my time reading books that helped me find the answers I had been seeking for a long time.

In my quest to find a lasting resolution of the problem of being constantly surrounded by toxic people I finally took action.

I have often been advised by many well-meaning friends to step out of my parent’s home to cut myself some slack from the daily drama.

Every time you subtract negative from your life, You make room for more positive. This quote summarises my philosophy in life. Read the full article on my blog #theerailivedin #positivequotes #quotes #quotestoliveby

I’d be lying if I say I have never considered that option.

However, after putting in much thought in the matter, I have decided to work upon ways to exist peacefully and one of the steps has been to deep dive into the psychology of the people who had been draining my emotional energy all the time.

I highly recommend reading the book; Emotional Vampires by Albert J. Bernstein

This book delivers on the promise of acclimatising us with the personality traits of the emotional vampires or the people who add toxicity in our daily lives and leave us feeling emotionally exhausted.

Reading this book over a number of times has helped me develop an action plan to survive the daily drama and thrive without feeling burnt out.

I’ve experienced a slow mindset shift that helps me spot the negativity the minute my mind tries to churn it. That’s exactly when I consciously guide my mind towards positive thoughts to prevent my calm and emotional energy be spent uselessly.

This book helped me realize that some people are just not meant to be in your life, making it easier to let them go and getting on with my life without guilt.

♥ A minimalist

I am a minimalist at heart. I am forever finding ways to reuse and recycle to minimise shopping for the stuff I really don’t need. I do not enjoy shopping. Not even online. Not even for clothes, bags (though I love them in all shapes, sizes and colours) or shoes.

But I did not get a chance to embrace minimalism until I lost a lifetime of earnings and all belongings at the hands of a greedy, heartless ex-husband.

All my growing up years I have been surrounded by people who LOVE the stuff and don’t tire from shopping and splurging. But it has only been now that I learnt to follow my heart and embrace minimalism in its true form.

This Diwali I emptied two closets full of clothes in great condition that weren’t being worn because of one excuse or the other. Though I faced immense resistance from the family, finally when we gave away the clothes to the needy, the happiness that we felt was priceless.

♥ More Patient

All my life I have lived by the illusion that I was a very patient person. It was only recently that this myth dispelled and came forth a face I had never known before.

The reality was what I had believed to be my patience was actually my ignorance in having the vocabulary to be able to name my emotions and virtues accurately.

Though my mind doesn’t altogether buy the above theory, some of life’s bitter experiences have told me otherwise. Awakened by the words of the sane, I have been investing a lot of time and conscious thought training myself to be more patient.

Parenthood has been the mirror that introduced me to the impatient self I have been all along.

One such step has been my transformation into a more peaceful parent . Though my full transformation is far from done.

♥ More Vocal

I used to be an inherently introvert, quiet person who shies away from the spotlight and is often the meekest girl on the block.

That was the case for a major part of my life until I was faced with the responsibility of being a single mother.

It was then I had no choice but to step out of the shadows and get working, talking, asking and doing everything I wanted my girl to do, someday.

Finding my voice hasn’t been easy.

Learning to stop letting the life-long social conditioning silence me has taken me a lot of work, learning and reading. Though I’m still taking baby steps in the direction, the results have already begun to show.

Being confident enough to put my foot down without fearing criticism or family resistance is an all-new territory for me.

The rush of adrenaline the drumming heartbeat in my ears and the pride in my daughter’s eyes when she sees her mother stand up for the principles she teaches has been driving force.

Words can’t describe how lighter my soul feels when I gently yet assertively refuse to behave in ways that my heart doesn’t believe in.

It is only now that I’m beginning to learn to feel what ‘being comfortable in your own skin’ truly feels like.

♥ Nurturing my Intuition

As a child, I was always amazed by how strong my intuition was. Though at the time, I used to call it a hunch or the sixth sense and rarely paid heed to it. After some major losses in my life (a miscarriage, a divorce, to name a few) my outlook towards life and above all my intuition has changed dramatically.

It took me a long time to come to the understanding that why I had been ignoring the subtle and not-so-subtle hints my body and the energies around me were constantly sending my way.

While I struggled to forgive myself for being an idiot at not listening to the voice of my conscience, it took me still more work to find the compassion I needed to let go of my past and be determined to get attuned to my intuition.

When you’ve been trained (by social conditioning) to not pay heed to your gut instinct (particularly as a woman), turning back to the way nature made us can be confusing, difficult and often frustrating.

But I’m not giving up. Despite the failures and false alarms I often encounter, I am working hard to nurture my intuition.

♥ Adopting self-compassion

I take no pride in admitting that self-compassion is altogether new territory for me.

For almost all of my existence, I have been so invested in being busy or playing the caregiver ( being conditioned to be so right from childhood ) that not stopping to care for my own self, not paying attention to my needs or my body has been the norm for me.

Not anymore.

In 2018, I finally adopted self-love and self-compassion in their entirety despite finding it to be an uncomfortable feeling in the start.

I stopped taking things personally.

Have I completely embraced self-compassion? Probably not.

However, I am slowly but surely getting there.

♥ Getting more comfortable with saying NO

This has been a gradual change that I have been consciously bringing about in my crowd-pleaser or rather obliger personality over the years. It was heartbreaking, to begin with, but the turning point came when I understood;

No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.

When you say no, you are only saying no to one option. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option . This mindset shift has saved me from a lot of grief and drama lately.

♥ Cutting off from the world and spending a lot of time on my own

As an introvert, I have been like this all my life. However, it is only recently that I have understood the needs why I love being so. This understanding has been the spark that helped me learn to spend my me-time, my solitude in carefree, open-hearted conversations with myself.

It can be rather boring sometimes but the sheer comfort I feel in my own company is something that keeps me looking forward to the alone time.

♥ Actively working on my issues

Each day of life is a struggle. It is our perspective and attitude towards life that defines where we go and we eventually become.

Journalling has helped me pay close attention to the things that slow me down, drain my emotional energy or make me weak.

By acknowledging my weaknesses, I feel I’m already ahead of the curve. I have been spared of the regret of never having the courage to look myself in the eye and work on what bothers me about myself.

And the best bit has been finding a solution to most of these hasn’t been as life-threatening as my mind has been telling me it would be.

♥ Being scared of the future but choosing to go ahead anyway

When my marriage fell apart and the massive responsibility of being a single mom fell on my shoulders, the one thing that haunted me night and day was the fear of the future. I was unsure if I had it in me to be able to do survive in the life I saw lying ahead of me.

However, today is different.

Today, I have been able to quieten those concerns.

I know that it isn’t always going to be easy. I’ll not always have the confidence that I probably have today, but I am ready to keep going and make the most of the life wholeheartedly.

Who am I becoming?

When I ask myself this question, I am focussing on what all I’m capable of achieving. Something that is yet to be explored, yet to be seen because its answer lies in the future.

However, I have a vision.

An ambition.

A direction that I want to give my life, to my very being.

When I think of the things I have done in the past, I can’t help but be amazed by the transformation I have undergone with each passing day.

When I assessed who I am , I got the starting point, the point of reference from where I have to move ahead in the direction of becoming the person of my dreams.

I am channelling my mind and my energies into a future self that I’m confident I can become.

When I was battling with depression, I had been focussing on becoming the person I am today.

I am imagining a bigger, better and an extraordinary future as a guide to help me become bigger, better and extraordinary enough to create a life that seems impossible at this moment.

Today, I am choosing to believe in impossible things.

Today, I am becoming a person whose life is what I am aiming to create for myself.

Today, I see my future as a blank slate. I have the power to change everything in my life.

Today, I am choosing to embrace the possibility of becoming someone I have never been. To be guided by my vision to reach the heights I have dared to conquer in my mind.

I’ve taken ownership of my existence and well-being, are you ready, too?

_______________________

Are you ready to create next-level results in becoming your leaner, healthier and calmer self?

I want to invite you to join my Be Healthy Be You program where you’re going to lose weight, be done with the struggle and know exactly how to maintain and enjoy those results with unapologetic confidence. It’s time to stop dreaming about the results you want and start enjoying them.

If you’re at the start of your weight loss journey, begin with the strategies that have helped lose 60 pounds and that I teach my coaching clients to achieve sustainable results. Take the FREE Weight Loss Ownership Course .

Share my story:

I Am Becoming A Person

Synthesis essay: the best place in college campus.

College is an interesting place. Some students struggles because they are unable to leave their normal world behind when their feet hit the campus, other students finds college to be an alternate universe where no one knows him/her. Past struggles. Past failures are all erased on the college campus. If at home life is difficult, the college campus can be an oasis. If they has felt out of place in the past, the college campus is a sanctuary that encourages weirdness. If one was labeled as a troublemaker in high school, the college campus wipes the slate clean. On the college campus one can become anything they want.

The Foster Portfolio: What I Want From Life

Many people might say their goal in life is to be successful. But how is success measured? It’s all a matter of opinion and influence. One society’s idea of success may be different than another society’s idea, just as one individual’s idea of success may be different from another individual’s idea. My idea of success is happiness. When I’m on my deathbed, I want to look back on my life and be truly happy with it. My goal is to continuously figure out what makes me happy and to strive to keep doing it. Part of the reason I’m going to college in the

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I decided to go to college because I believe that education is an important part of life and that being educated has many advantages. Like many, one of the biggest reasons for deciding to attend college is to create a better future for myself. Being a first-generation college student my parents have implanted on me the importance of college education, as it is something they wish they would have done themselves. As the first of four children to go to college, I feel that it is my responsibility to be a good example to my younger siblings, and show them that it is important to have goals in life and to better yourself as a person through education. I understand that an university education may not be for everyone, but it felt like the right choice for me. What I hope to get out of college is a life-changing experience, not only to get a better education, but to find something I am truly passionate about. I think it is important when choosing a career or a major to find something your heart truly wants and not just a career that will make you able to afford expensive things. I also hope that somewhere along the path to graduation and adulthood, I find myself as a person and develop ideas, opinions, and to be able to approach the world with an

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Higher education is good for many things in today's world. College experiences help people to truly find themselves through personal growth. Higher education will expose you to people, ideas, and topics that you would never encounter in high school. Each year of college assists in

Write An Essay About The 1940's

College is a new and exciting experience for incoming freshmen; it is a place that many have never even stayed the night. The only time many have been at campus is when visiting the grounds. When I come to college I am not there to simply relax or goof off. College is a tool that I can use to feather my education, to make connections and attain a job in my

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I decided to go to college because I felt like this could be a way for me to experience new things and help me get to where i wanna be in the future by doing something I love. I wanted a better education other than just having a High School Diploma. I was very fortunate to go to college, so I want to make the best of it. Going to college is way for me to make good life decisions that would be beneficial for me in life. Also, it is a great way for me to acquire a successful good paying job and to teach me how to learn new skills on my own. In college, I hope to figure my strength and weaknesses so i can be aware on different areas that i need to improve on. Establishing an academic goal is another achieve for me because, making good grades and

Community College Reflection

After a hectic first semester at the community college, I began to find myself. I realized that the four-year university I wanted to attend initially, would have not been a good fit for me. Being part of different student organizations and creating connections with my professors at the community college is what helped me find what I was really looking for. I wanted a place where I felt like I mattered and not a school with fifty thousand students where I would just feel like a number. The additional semester I got to stay home, I was able to do more research and find a university where I would fit in and connect with.

I Believe In College

College is such an environment that it allows me to have freedom to choose my own classes, and have opportunities that allow me to better myself as a person. Through programs like those that help someone study abroad or complete a service project,

College serves and will continue to serve me for the rest of my life, in addition college will be infinitely worthwhile to me. The essential reason for going to college was personal prosperity. Wealth in knowledge is notably beneficial no matter what it is you're learning. Personally I would like my own extravagances in life, not only to live under my parents forever, but having the ability to have a home of my choosing, drive any car imaginable while living life and having fun with friends and family. Providing for a family I one day strive to obtain, from food on the table to the largest of college funds.

Going to college was always an important aspect to me. Coming from a home where the highest level of education was a GED, making something of myself has been a substantial goal that I’ve always yearned. When I was in the 8th grade, I was determined to become a veterinarian. It’s become somewhat apart of who I am. Going to college means that I’m one step closer to progressing to my goal. My goal to actually make something of myself that no one thought I could legitimately achieve.

Why I Want To Attend College

From a young age, I’ve always known I wanted to attend college. To pursue what intrigues me and to study what I’m passionate about sounds like an opportunity I just cannot pass up. I have always enjoyed going to school and learning new subjects year after year, each year, giving a deeper understanding of the topics given to me. College would assist in broadening my horizons, finding new experiences, and deepening my roots in education.

Comfort Zone Scholarship

College is a place where students can learn more and get an experience they have never had before. Although, many people have different motives to why they attend college. For instance furthering their education, just doing it because their parents want them to, be successful, making new friends, and gaining independence could all be some motives. College was always an option for me. I knew I was going to attend college the day I decided I wanted to become a doctor. I figured, why not pick a career where I will be needed every day. There will always be a demand for doctors because the population continues to grow each and every day. I decided I wanted to become a Pediatrician in the fifth grade. Every day after school, I would go to my Aunt

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I want to go to college because I want to improve my skill and my ability .I think I can learn many things and know all kinds of knowledge in college. All I learn in college can use in the future.The most important thing in college is to learn how to get along with others and enhance my interpersonal skill. That is why I want to go to college. Moreover,I can join the club and know people who has the same interests or hobbies.There are many ways to make our college more colorful.

Going To College

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To begin, one good thing about college is it makes you want your goals more. By this I mean, the hard work that you put into college becomes drive to make you complete your goal. In other words, college is like a videogame and your goal is the princess. The harder you work on the levels to get to the princess the more you want her. So in other words. One example of this is my mother, when I was younger my mom decided to go back to college.

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I got a wash daily and we (I and Max) daily go for a ride with his friends to casino, malls, long drive in outskirts of the city and enjoyed a lot. After a month full of enjoyment, I was in the garage when I saw that all my ancestors and cousins were damaged and were not used since I am here… I thought if a new car comes in this garage then my condition will be the same as my family. I removed this though from my mind as I thought I am the best car of the decade no one can replace me. Max’s friends also bought Lamborghinis and I got some new friends ….. Max and his friend drag raced with their cars which made my wheels worse and Max son of a millionaire doesn’t took care of me. I just got a wash daily nothing else.…

The Importance Of My Father Drive

As a kid I was always tempted and amazed, I believed it took an extremely responsible person to finish the task my father would accomplish every year. Looking very easy and enjoyable for my dad to drive to our destination, our yearly family trip wasn’t just around the corner it was hundreds and hundreds of never ending miles away. It took us about twenty hours every time. Twenty hours of sitting in the same spot did not go very fast for the ones around especially when being anxious to arrive to your destination and see your family eagerly waiting for you to arrive. It seemed like I was the only one who felt excited from the moment my father would start the engine, enjoying seeing the things I didn’t see every day, statues caught my attention…

Personal Narrative: Growing Up With Opiates

Eric and I talk daily and our relationship is better than it has ever been. We were able to forgive each other for the years of harsh words we shared between each other. If any new person were to ask me if I had any siblings, I would proudly answer,…

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Who am I becoming?

17 November 2017

I started down the path of being a coach in November 2016. Here we are a year later and I’m realizing that so much personal growth has happened throughout this journey that I never even imagined possible. I was so eager to be a coach. There’s a fire in my belly…I was meant to do this. However, as I started taking on clients and going through all the exercises learning how to be an effective coach, something was nagging at me. There were so many things in my own life that were blocking me from showing up as my true, authentic self. So I did what I believe every coach should do…I hired a coach. After working with my own personal coach (it’s been several months now), I was able to feel the discomfort in the shift as I started dropping the masks and allowing myself to be…ME. Recently, my coach asked one powerful question: “Who are you becoming?” I appreciated this question, as I believe that life is a process and every day is an opportunity to be/become the best version of our self. So I took some time to really let that question sink in. Here’s what I came up for me… Who am I becoming ? When I think of that question, what really comes to mind is how I have suppressed who I have always been. I’m smart, sensitive, empathetic, giving, and I love hard; I have somehow always thought that these things could be very negative things about myself (I’ll explain later). So how can I be all those things in a way that empowers me to live my true purpose? Who I am becoming is a person that is comfortable enough in her own skin and mind. With that…I can confidently and passionately live the life I was meant to live. Smart – I’m a problem solver. My brain processes quickly and the gears are always turning. I grew up being told that because I “thought differently” and challenged information I didn’t agree with, that I was belligerent. I was punished for thinking differently and for having an opinion or for being curious. It taught me to not step out line (at least not confidently…I am who I am and I could never turn my brain off) Who I am becoming is someone that lives with true curiosity. I ask questions, listen and trust my gut. When something doesn’t sound or feel right…I do my research and form my own thoughts and stand by them. I welcome discussion, I see now that not every disagreement is a “failure” for me, and I’m not out to prove anyone wrong. I am genuinely curious and embrace my love of learning, even if it goes against everything I’ve been previously taught. I’m becoming confident in my thinking and learning. Sensitive – I have spent my entire life being ashamed of feeling; I believed it meant that I was vulnerable and weak. I’m becoming someone who is aware of my feelings and looks for what those emotions are telling me. I’m becoming someone that can look within and ask myself, “why do I feel this” and then I can choose how to respond. The emotions being felt aren’t bad…it’s how I ACT on them. I’m becoming in control of my response to my emotions. Empathetic – When others hurt, I hurt. A hungry stranger on the side of the road, a sad family member, or a scared child…I feel it. This ties in with being sensitive. However, I’m also a “fixer”. I’m am someone who is empathetic, but now recognizes what I can and cannot do. I’ve sometimes become so overwhelmed with empathy that I fall (or rather jump) into others’ turmoil. I can have empathy and compassion, but need to recognize when I can TRULY be of help or when all that is needed is for me to listen, acknowledge and validate. I’m becoming aware of my own boundaries. Giving – I’ve always thought of myself as a “giving” person. However, in certain relationships I saw it more like a bank. I made all these deposits, with the idea that I could withdraw when I needed to. This often leaves me disappointment, hurt, and embarrassed when I go to make a withdrawal (especially from my closer relationships) only to learn that it doesn’t work that way. To truly give, you must do it without any expectation of anything in return. I’m becoming a true GIVER, understanding that to give is to do so without expectation of return. I love hard – I’m passionate, if I decide I love, then I LOVE. I laugh at myself often because it doesn’t matter what it is, if I love it…I’m so devoted that I’m laser focused. I think it stems from fear that if I don’t love something or someone hard enough, then I deserve the failure, rejection, loss, etc. . Even things that I don’t necessarily need, or are actually toxic, I will convince myself that I just need to love harder to make it right. Does that make sense? Almost like a “if I love you, then you won’t hurt me” or a “if I give my all, then I’ll be happy in the end”. I’m recognizing that not EVERYTHING or EVERYONE deserves my passion. I love hard for the end game or the outcome. Not really allowing myself the time or the space to pause, look around and decide if I even really like it. I love people so hard before I even really know them or their intentions. I love hard, and often love the wrong things. Last night someone said to me, “you were always enough, you just gave your best parts to the wrong things” and I thought “WOW!” I have been loving so hard and giving so much and when all is said and done, I can’t really tell you what I truly love. I’m just being passionate for the sake of being passionate. Giving my best parts to everything except stopping and asking “do I really love this?” I’ve been so attached to the outcome, I didn’t recognize that the process was killing me. I was on this cycle of “if I just love hard enough and hit the goal…I’ll finally be happy” I’m becoming someone that looks at myself and asks, “what really makes you happy and how can you live and love that passionately?”. So, the truth is I’ve always been smart, sensitive, empathetic, giving and passionate. However, I’m becoming someone that lives those qualities authentically, confidently and without compromise of my own peace. I’m exhaling my true self and doing so un-apologetically. I’m breathing…finally breathing. For more information on how YOU can begin your transformation and BECOME who you were truly meant to be, email me at [email protected] Gain access to more articles, tips, emails and MORE here: https://forms.aweber.com/form/84/1717122984.htm

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:: to improve family nurturing at home and team effectiveness at work ::, what kind of person am i becoming what kind of people are we becoming together.

Reflections on Interpersonal Communication and the Journey of Becoming a Person – – – by Dennis Rivers, MA — Communication Skills Trainer — 1998

Introduction In recent years I have taught a series of courses in communication skills to groups of university students who are about to volunteer in prisons, county jails, juvenile halls and other criminal justice institutions. We focus on topics such as the power of supportive listening and how we come to know ourselves better in the process of explaining our experiences to someone. In their role as peer mentors they will be both using their communication skills and encouraging their mentored companions to develop better ways of communicating their way through everyday conflicts. The focus of my class and the focus of peer mentoring is largely tactical, how to listen and express yourself more competently. There are, however, larger issues connected with interpersonal communication and subtle but important transactions going on between coach and trainee. I would like to be able to tell my students, all of them headed toward challenging encounters, just what these issues are, but it has taken longer than I imagined to put the issues into words. In this essay, dedicated to my students, I will be exploring how the way we talk and listen is related to the way we live, so that coaching a person to communicate differently is at the same time coaching a person to live differently.

To give just one preliminary example of what I’m talking about, one of the largest issues in moment-to-moment interpersonal communication is that many people do not express their thoughts, feelings and wants very clearly, perhaps out of fear of rejection. That vagueness prevents people from getting their needs met. But this particular issue, which surfaces in conversational coaching, is also, on a larger scale, the main issue addressed by Rogerian psychotherapy: that in hopes of winning the approval of others, we learn to present a stance to the world that can be totally disconnected from our own deepest feelings (our “organismic experiencing,” in Rogers’ terms), with which we may have lost touch altogether. In this light you can see that something sounding as simple as “communicating your needs more clearly” can have several levels of significance in a person’s life. In the course of teaching communication skills, I have tried to make the subject easy to grasp by keeping the focus on short-term goals. And there are many great books that do the same. But the communication training encounter is also an encounter of persons exploring more satisfying ways of becoming persons together. The challenge for me as a trainer is to get people engaged and motivated at both levels. In this essay I am going to concentrate on our desire to unfold as persons, our urges to become more fully human.

Motivations for learning new communication skills My experience has been that what brings most people to communication classes is usually an immediate need to have more satisfying conversations with a particular person or in a particular setting. These reasons are perfectly good ones as far as they go, but they are often not very deep or long-term. The problem here is that developing one’s speaking, listening, questioning, reflecting and negotiating skills takes a fair amount of effort. And the short term motivations that people bring to the process may not keep them involved long enough for them to reach their goals. No one expects to become an athlete or a violinist in a single weekend, but many people hope to make major improvements in their communication style with a minimum investment of time and effort, only to be disappointed at the meager results. What seems to be needed in communi-cation training are motivations that are deeper and perhaps encompass entire seasons of a person’s life, or perhaps one’s entire life. Whenever we find examples of high competence and excellence in human life, we also find examples of deep, long-term motivations. I fully encourage (almost) all of my students’ pragmatic motivations. But in order to get my students inspired with more of the motivation they will need to reach their competence goals, I have begun to introduce them to such life-long questions as, “What kind of person do I want to become?” (or, alternatively, “Who’s life inspires me?”) “What kind of person do I enjoy being?” “How can I deepen my relationships with the important people in my life, the life that lives between us?” “What kind of world do I want to create with my conversations and actions” These are tough questions but they are also powerful questions. They challenge a person to develop more inner and relational goals, rather than being only outer-directed by the immediate needs of coping with work and family situations. Again, I am not saying that there is anything bad about such immediate goals and I do everything within my power to help people reach them. My only reservation about these goals is that they may not be energizing enough to provide for their own fulfillment. What I propose, both to my students and to you, my reader, is that developing better communication skills can be a central way of becoming more of the person one wants to be, and creating more of the world one wants to create. To explain this idea, I will first explore some of the things we mean when we say someone is a “person.” Then I will present a kind of synthesis of what many deep thinkers have agreed are the qualities of personhood toward which we are all growing (some of us more willingly than others). From there I will present five arguments suggesting that our personhood emerges largely in and through our conversations, which means that we can have some influence over how we develop as persons. And finally I will discuss some of the formidable challenges we face in trying to steer both our conversations and our lives toward the qualities-in-action that make people more fully human.

Three meanings of personhood While legal personhood is something we achieve simply by the fact of being born in a particular country, psychological or familial personhood seems to me to be much more like a set of muscles. Our psychological personhood grows by being exercised in the classic human relationships: parent, child, sibling, friend, enemy, coworker, supervisor, teacher and student. And within these relationships it is exercised primarily in an ongoing stream of interpersonal encounters that include talking, listening, fighting, cooperating, making and keeping commitments, turning our experiences into coherent stories, and so on. Just as a baby struggles to stand up, we all struggle to develop the awareness and skill that will allow us to function fully as a person among persons. While the Declaration of Independence asserts that we are all born with certain inalienable rights, unfortunately we are not born with the skills we need to exercise those rights wisely or to make a happy life with others. We start out with a big gap between rights and capabilities. Discussions about being a person can be confusing because they can mix together several different meanings of “person,” especially: · the unfinished and evolving personhood of family, psychology and literature, · the already achieved personhood of law (“You are a citizen from the day you are born.”) and · the already achieved personhood religion (“You are a person because God created you with an immortal soul”). With each of these meanings we offer respect to other people and we ask for respect from them. In my experience all three of these meanings offer something special and worth pondering, but no one of these meanings is a very good substitute for either of the other two. For example, one may be able to fulfill many of the requirements of being a citizen (for example, don’t steal, pay your taxes, vote, etc.) without being a very well-developed person (for example, being a friend to your friends in times of trouble, being an influence for reconciliation when conflicts arise, etc.). This sorting out of meanings is necessary in order to make a kind of separate and accepting mental space for our perpetual un-finished-ness as persons, to disentangle the “already given” from the “continuously created.” To say that we are continually learning, growing and evolving as persons is not to say that we are less than full citizens (or that we are less than children of God, for those who think in religious terms). While being less that a full citizen would be an insult to one’s dignity, to be a not-yet-fully-completed person is simply to be human like everyone else. Each season of life offers us a different set of lessons and skills to learn. (I thought a lot about this a few years ago when I became like a parent to my frail and elderly father.) The fact that being a person is ongoing process of becoming makes it possible to live hopefully: no matter how we may have succeeded or failed in the past, each day allows us to start over with a new set of challenges.

The possibilities of personhood At this point you may be starting to feel, “Enough with these abstractions! If life is a process of becoming, what is it that we are trying to become?” To provide a working answer to that question I offer you the following list of the qualities of what one might call a “fully developing” person. This list is drawn from many sources, ancient and modern, among which there is actually a lot of agreement. You will recognize the influence of Jesus, St. Paul and St. Francis on this list, along with Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Martin Buber, Erik Erikson, Rom Harré and Gautama Buddha. In compiling this synthesis, it has helped me a great deal to think often in terms of styles of engaged action (such as “honestly” and “compassionately”) rather than only in terms of fixed qualities of character (such as “honest” or “compassionate”). Thus translated into adverbs (and grouped into related clusters), we can say that at every stage along life’s way we are challenged to act (and converse with one another)… … more awarely (of self, other and context) … more skillfully, competently and wisely … more honestly, sincerely, genuinely, congruently (inner matches outer) … more caringly, compassionately, acceptingly, respectfully, warmly, forgivingly … more creatively and “exploratorily” (with more creative openness to new experience) … more courageously, hopefully and faithfully … more generously and nurturingly, delighting in the happiness of others … more meaningfully and expressively, organizing and expressing our experiences in coherent patterns of words, music, movement and imagery … more gratefully and appreciatively, open to delight … more engagingly, energetically and responsively … more gracefully and beautifully (in the Navajo sense of beauty as cosmic harmony) It is interesting to note that, along with overlapping and interweaving, all these qualities of action are open-ended. There is no limit to any of them. Now matter how much we had achieved on any of them, creativity, for example, we would want to go on and develop more. For another example: because there is no upper bound to kindness, I imagine that most people who are very kind would not admit to being so, but might admit that they were “growing toward kindness along with all of us.” Every now and then you will meet someone who embodies the opposite of many of these qualities (fearful, miserly, hostile, resentful). What you will notice about such people is that they are usually also very unhappy and isolated. I am not arguing here that we should practice these styles of action in order to be “good” as defined by some external authority. That would imply that if we could get away from the all-seeing eye of that authority, we could just relax and go back to being deceptive and resentful. I am arguing instead that these qualities appear to be the inherent directions of human fulfillment. They are our own built-in recipe for becoming fully human persons. Where this recipe originally came from I will leave to theologians and evolutionary biologists, who have filled many volumes discussing the source of human virtues. The unfolding of these qualities in people seems equally miraculous to me, whether I think of these qualities as the flowering of a billion years of evolution or as the gradual revelation of God’s presence in our own hearts. Wherever these qualities have come from, what is clear to me is that these are the qualities of successful and complex long-term human cooperation. And successful cooperation means better survival for the group that practices it, although the emergence of successful cooperation is not at all automatic. It is not like growing hair. It is much more like searching for food, a process which, although it has life and death biological significance, may or my not be fully realized. Consider for a moment that the speech folds of our brains contain no specific language when we are born, but await completion from human culture. In a similar way, our capacity to develop all the cooperation-facilitating qualities-in-action just listed awaits actualization in nurturing families, schools and cultures. (That is what communication training is about: to improve the chances that people will be able to cooperate with one another to meet life’s challenges.) Following in the very large footsteps of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, I believe that each human being is born with both a capacity and a gentle yearning to grow in these many directions: toward awareness, caring, creativity and so on. The more actions we perform that express these qualities, the more we have feelings of coherence, community, integrity, and well-being. We like ourselves more. The fewer of these kinds of actions we perform the more we have feelings of fragmentation, alienation, self-dislike and perhaps numbness. Unfortunately, our “gentle yearning” to grow in these directions is easily overruled by harsh circumstances. Thus we need to work together to nurture those impulses in ourselves and others and so create a social world that feels good to live in. Focusing on the qualities-in-action that I have compiled into the list presented above is one possible context for understanding where are we going and what are we doing together. The story of my life, in this context, becomes the story of my journey into awareness, kindness, insight, courage, and so on, perhaps as exemplified by the heroes and archetypes of my culture. And my deepest relationship with you is to encourage your development in these directions, first by my own embodiment of these qualities, and second by becoming your companion on this journey of development. Such companionship, whether in parenting, friendship or psychotherapy, contains a powerful creative tension between, on one side, a vision of and a hope for the best that you can become, and, on the other side, a profound acceptance and forgiveness of all the trial and error along the way. We give and receive crucial forms of this kind of developmental encouragement in conversation: receiving the story of another person’s struggles and sharing the story one’s own successes and failures.

Seven arguments in favor of the centrality of conversation in human development At his point you might quite reasonably be thinking, “Well, that we should all strive to act in ways that are more aware, caring and skillful is a nice idea but not a new one, and furthermore, what do these various noble qualities have to do with communication?” The answer that I offer to this question is already implied in the last few paragraphs. As I see it, the world of conversation between us is a uniquely important and available arena in which to adopt more of these qualities. Since this is a weighty proposition, allow me to present several arguments that support it. First of all, it is in our conversations that we rehearse our actions. Therefore, the more skillful and creative our rehearsals, the better our actual performances will be. If we can’t imagine doing something, we probably won’t be able to do it. Conversations, both inner and outer, are where we do most of this essential imagining (“I wonder what would happen if I…”). So the qualities of our conversations spill over into our actions, for better or for worse, which we then remember as part of our life story, which is an important component of our personhood. Our actions and society’s reaction to them become a significant part of our personhood. (Rob a bank and you’ve just transformed yourself into a “bank robber.”) We become the qualities of what we do, after we talk ourselves into doing it, or don’t talk ourselves out of doing it. Second, conversation itself is an action, and it is the context in which we both encounter essential human tasks and practice many significant human virtues (understood as qualities of action). For example, major forms of honesty, kindness, awareness, are creativity are utterly conversational. To begin with the first of these, one of the primary forms of honesty concerns giving accurate descriptions in conversations with others. “Thou shalt not lie.” This is not a warm-up for some other more fundamental virtue, this is a virtue itself that lives (or dies) in conversation. For another example, think of the kindness involved in listening supportively to a friend who is going through some great trial, perhaps having just learned of the death of a loved one. This kindness of listening caringly is not some lesser kindness, some practice for the real thing that will come later. This conversational kindness is the real thing. Continuing with the qualities that I noted at the beginning of this paragraph, if we look at awareness as a virtue, we see that our horizon of awareness in shaped by the possibilities allowed by our vocabulary and grammar, which are elaborated in our conversations. It’s hard to pay attention to something until we have a conversationally-transmitted word for it. With regard to creativity as a virtue, stringing words together into unique sequences is one of the primary forms of human creativity, and a form that nurtures many other non-linguistic forms of creativity. My illustrations could be expanded to show how all the other qualities-in-action I have listed (hopefully, courageously, beautifully, etc.) find a major form of expression in conversation. Third, we use conversation to both assert ourselves and to commune with others, the essential tasks of human development. According to the developmental psychologist Robert Kegan two overarching tasks, communion and assertion, stand out as being equally at the core of a fully human life,. Communion means under-standing, empathizing with and nurturing the people around us. Assertion includes our ability to press for the fulfillment of our own needs and our gradually unfolding ability to conceive of and guide our own lives. Although Kegan does not especially emphasize conversation as a central part of the developmental process, conversing is the main way most people assert themselves and commune with others. The conclusion I draw from Kegan’s work is that the way we learn to converse, clearly or confusedly, creatively or dully, compassionately or demeaningly, will have a giant impact on how well or how poorly we accomplish the central tasks of personhood he describes. Fourth, conversations are small enough units of behavior that we can, with effort, steer them toward the qualities we want to embody. It is very difficult to make direct changes in one’s character or overall attitudes, but conversations provide us with endless opportunities to move in positive directions. The adverbial qualities of our conversations (wisely, honestly, awarely, acceptingly, etc.) become the adjectival qualities of our character (wise, aware, accepting, etc.). The qualities-in-action adverbs are a sort of gentle “on-ramp” of personal character: conversations are an accessible starting place for working on the kind of persons we would like to become, one that allows us to begin again and again. The same can be said for communing and asserting. We learn to balance these competing pulls one conversation at a time. Fifth, we use conversational storytelling to recognize ourselves and others as persons to be loved and protected, or as objects to be used and broken. This is true throughout life, from the baby’s emerging sense of self-and-other that grows out of the gradually unfolding mother-infant dialogue, to the mythic themes that peoples and nations use to define themselves in relation to other peoples and nations. We have been told many times that words are not objects or people, but merely words. And that is true as far as it goes, but I submit to you that such understanding does not go far enough. A lot of current thinking and research suggests that how well we recognize others as people depends on our memories of nurturing conversations, the richness or poverty of our vocabulary of experience, the labels we are taught to use, and how we use that vocabulary and labeling to weave our experiences and expectations of others into coherent stories shared and reinforced in further conversation. The war that accompanied the breakup of the former Yugoslavia provides a tragic example of this story-making at work. Both the Serbs and the Croats used stories of World War Two atrocities to whip up hatred against the other side. This created a coherent context in which new atrocities could be committed in the name of just revenge. Such processes of demonizing and vilifying are strongly rooted in conversation and storytelling, as are the processes of honoring and appreciating. Because we use story-making and story-sharing to organize our experience of other people and define our relationship to others, we are especially vulnerable to manipulative story-tellers, whether they are advertisers, cult gurus or demagogic politicians. The story that I tell you to express and justify how I see other people is an important part of “me,” my personhood, as we all realize when we meet someone on the street who is convinced that half the people in town are malevolent agents from outer space. How different this is from the “all children of the same loving God” theme elaborated by The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and what a different sense of “me” this latter theme evokes. The qualities of these kind of conversations both reflect and create the qualities of our lives. Sixth, conversations are the primary medium through which we heal the emotional wounds of living. As Judith Viorst so eloquently describes in her book, Necessary Losses, even in a life full of advantages and good health every step of human development is accompanied by and catalyzed by deep experiences of loss. We leave the womb to gain the world. We raise our kids only to have them leave home just about the time when they could become our friends. By the time we reach middle age and can truly understand our parents, our parents often die, leaving us with a complex burden of grief at the loss and gratitude for life, fragile and finite though it is. In addition to these sufferings that are built into life, many lives, perhaps most, are marked by some degree of trauma and deprivation. Several of my close friends, for example, had in childhood a parent who was mentally ill or a violent alcoholic. Other friends participated in the Vietnam war, to their eternal regret. And for others, who protested the war, the Vietnam war era was so disorienting that they lost confidence in being able to have a normal life of fulfillment in family and work. I want to make two points here that are very unpopular in an optimistic culture: first that life includes suffering and second that much of the suffering and loss in life has nothing to do with our misbehavior (although it is also true that we can cause some of our own suffering). That is to say, being wounded by life and learning to heal are central, inescapable parts of becoming a mature person. And, it is through many heartfelt conversations that we engage in this healing process, that we bring these painful experiences into focus and create a meaningful life story out of a seemingly random sequence of sorrows and disappointments. Sometimes these conversations are called, “psychotherapy,” but even more often we call them “deep friendship” and “parenting.” In all these contexts, according to Carl Rogers, healing conversations have the same qualities. The helping partners in these dialogues communicate honestly, caringly, respectfully, understandingly, expressively, and in a way that is open to new experience. In the company of such supportive conversation partners we reconcile ourselves to the sorrows and losses in life, and find the strength to start over, to meet life anew. (Although it is certainly possible for many people heal their life wounds through art and dance, for most people the focus of emotional healing is in conversation. And even therapies centered in art, movement or music include the kinds of conversations just mentioned.) Finally, seventh, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that just plain thinking itself is internalized conversing. It is in the styles, themes and cognitive challenges of our conversations that we help our children learn to think. (The scholar I find most inspiring on this topic is Jerome Bruner.) While spatial perception and motor skills are absolutely essential dimensions of human development, the same must be said for conversation skills (which are usually referred to as the disembodied abstraction, “language”). Daily conversations challenge the growing child to perform ever larger and more complex feats of memory, logic, creativity and understanding the experience of others. The sentence is the seed of the story, and the story is the seed of an autobiography: a story about myself and others that allows me to imagine my own life and thus think of myself as a person among persons. The mind unfolds in conversation and story-telling, which remain major forms of mental exercise throughout life. But not only do we learn to think and imagine in conversation, we learn to think and imagine in a particular personal style shown to us by our earliest caregivers. Appreciatively or resentfully, hopefully or cynically, honestly or deceptively, creatively or routinely: our styles of making contact with one another and making sense of life are the gifts or curses we bestow upon our children. And it will be largely through their conversations that they will keep alive and deepen whatever style of thinking we have passed on to them. Here, then, in recapitulation, are my seven arguments in favor of the proposition that we become persons largely in and through our conversations with others (and with ourselves, also, after we have absorbed early in life a large amount of conversational interaction): 1) In conversations we conceive and rehearse the important actions of our lives, including cooperation with others. 2) In conversation we can embody all the fundamental human virtues (or faults). 3) We use conversation to both assert ourselves and to commune with others, which are the two essential tasks of human development. 4) Conversations allow us to approach and practice all those virtues and tasks in small steps. 5) In conversations we learn and put into action our understanding of ourselves and others as persons to be loved and protected or as objects to be used and broken. 6) Conversations are the primary medium through which we heal the emotional wounds of living. 7) In conversation we learn and renew our fundamental style of thinking. In light of these seven arguments, it is a mistake to imagine that our “real” life takes place beyond all words, and we then have “mere” conversations about it, as if life and conversation were two were separate circles. A truer picture, I believe, would be to locate the conversation circle inside the life circle. Our conversations are real life activities, as real as running or swimming or planting food. For me, these seven arguments are deeply important because they all imply that by improving the way we talk and listen we can create gentle waves of change in both our relationships with other people and our inner relationship with ourselves. In much the same way that the smallest part of a fern has the same shape as the entire fern branch, the moment of conversation holds the shape of a lifetime. Although from the “whole life” perspective we can speak of moments combining to make a life story, the whole giving meaning to each of the parts, this point of view can tend to devalue each moment. From the “eternal moment” perspective, our lives unfold one moment at a time and the quality we give our present moment is the quality of our life. The life we are given is given to us one moment at a time. Therefore we would live more fulfilling lives if we cultivated each moment (and each conversation) as an enormous opportunity to live more awarely, compassionately, courageously, appreciatively, and so on. (I advocate using both of these points of view, the whole life and the eternal moment, and alternating between them, as a way of thinking about one’s life.) Because we converse with one another day in and day out, it is easy lose track of how significant all these individual moments and everyday conversations are in our journey of becoming. I hope the arguments I have just presented will inspire you to see the familiar as strange, to see your everyday conversations as full of wonderful possibilities. No matter where we find ourselves on the spectrum of development, I believe, each of us was born to embody all these qualities-in-action and the capacity to grow more fully in these directions lies within each of us at every moment.

The challenges we face in striving to become more fully human That we have within us these wonderful capacities does not mean that it will be easy to develop them. Having brain folds for speech does not automatically provide us with language, and being born with lots of muscle cells does not provide us with fully-formed muscles. Similarly, my experience has been that developing more of these inherently human qualities and nurturing them in others is the most challenging task in a human life. (I actually believe that task is what we are here for.) So in concluding this essay, allow me to share with you what I see as some of the most significant challenges and barriers to this kind of human development and possible responses to those challenges. The momentum of the old ways. First of all, however we talk, listen, interrupt, fight, nurture and/or demean one another has a great amount of psychological ‘momentum’ behind it. We have been practicing doing it that way for a long time, we identify with our current conversation style as an important part of our being, and the style connects us to the people who taught us to talk this way (usually our parents). Not all of this momentum is bad. If we did not have some established patterns of our own we would be led astray by the first pied piper or cult guru who passed through town. But the momentum of the styles we learned as children and developed up to now can keep us trapped in ways of relating that need changing, that will never bring us any real fulfillment or happiness. For me, the answer to this problem is not to try to forcibly break a person’s identification with their present pattern, as is the case in Marine boot camp, cult indoctrination and some drug treatment programs. From my perspective that still leaves a person completely other-directed, without an inner compass to follow. For me the answer to the problem of momentum is to raise the issue of momentum, to challenge people to wrestle with that issue consciously and to choose consciously the people they want to emulate, the heroes they want to follow and the qualities they want to embody. The mental workout of paying attention. Second of all, aside from the effort it might take to change our ways of communicating, it takes a considerable amount of mental effort to just focus one’s attention on conversations and the qualities they express. In contrast to an object or a single event, each conversation is like a little novel: a complex sequence of events, each one of which is meaningful because of its relationship to all the others. As each new conversational event takes place, we have to imagine the many possible meanings it might have in relation to the various conversational and life events that came before it. Beyond the mental workout demanded by the need to remember and interweave long sequences of actions, paying conscious attention to the qualities of those action sequences requires that we exercise our capacities for abstract thought and self-observation. Forewarned of these mental demands, we can develop more realistic expectations and make a place for more practice in our lives (more discussions, support groups, long talks, less TV). The tension among virtues. A third challenge is that many of the qualities-in-action that make us most fully human are in deep and creative tension with one another. For example, while we are told from an early age both to be kind and to tell the truth, it takes years of practice to learn how to bring both these qualities into the same encounter. The same can be said for the many problem-solving situations in life that require us to think both honestly and creatively. The developmental theorist Robert Kegan has gone so far as to describe the human personality as, figuratively speaking, stretched into existence by the tension between our need to commune with others and our equally strong need to assert ourselves. It appears that our personhood is like a living fabric which grows by being simultaneously pulled strongly in many directions. Knowing that our development will be a challenging balancing act rather than a placid flowering, we can adopt a more forgiving attitude toward the setbacks in our own development and the development of others. Resisting the short-term apparent benefits of deception and coercion. A fourth challenge might be called, “the eternal temptations.” In the course of living, it often seems much easier to tell less than the whole truth, both to others and to ourselves. And it also can seem much easier to try to get what we want by threatening other people rather than by negotiating with them and honoring their needs. While lying, self-deception and bullying may give a person some momentary advantages, relying on such maneuvers will make it impossible to form long-term relationships of trust and cooperation. And the lack of such warm, supportive relationships is one of the deepest wounds a person can experience. If we deceive or bully our friends and partners in life, we soon will not have any friends or partners. The sooner in life we figure this out, the better off we will be, but will to resist these temptations is a deep lesson and we may or may not get the help we need to learn it. One measure of a culture is how it helps its members outgrow these temptations by developing a long-term sense of relationship-building and community-building, how it helps its members make the journey from coercing to cooperating. Since most societies rely on quite a bit of coercion to maintain social order we are, in general, more likely to learn how to obey than how to cooperate. This leads us to the final challenge in my list… An often hostile environment. To me, a fifth challenge to our development as persons comes from the particular social world in which we live. Although our fulfillment as persons may depend on our cultivation of the qualities-in-action I described in the opening pages of this paper, the society we live in may not want its members to be all that aware, honest, creative or courageous. Consider, for example, the social pressure during almost a century of American history (1776-1860) for many Americans to ignore the glaring contradiction between the institution of slavery and the national ideal that “all men are created equal.” Or the pressure on ordinary Germans to look the other way as their supposedly refined and highly civilized nation descended into bloodshed and madness. Or the current culture of violence-as-entertainment, which, in countless movies, books and video games, celebrates and idealizes cruelty, injury and murder, making kindness more and more unthinkable. As Arno Gruen points out in The Insanity of Normality , our struggle for integrity is often, unfortunately, a struggle against the socially accepted world around us. Following Gruen, I see us encountering this taken-for-granted insanity in many forms, as lying bosses, alcoholic parents, segregated restaurants, violent TV shows, programs to build weapons of mass destruction that are really collective suicide devices, and state governments that supposedly save their citizens money by running lotteries that take even more money from those same citizens. In terms of living more honestly and awarely, and developing more of all the other qualities-in-action I have discussed in this essay, one would have to admit that we are surrounded by truly bad examples. When we numb ourselves enough to blot all of this out of awareness, we numb ourselves enough to lose track of our own lives, the very lives we were hoping to protect and cultivate. If we could consciously acknowledge that some aspects of our world are going to be hostile to our fulfillment as persons, we might be able to find healthier ways of protecting ourselves. (Spending less time in front of the TV and more time in nature with friends and family, for example.) Becoming a person would be a challenge even if we did not have large companies offering us 24-hour-a-day kickboxing to stir us up and alcohol to calm us down, an endless stream of large-screen bad news to depress us and then Prozac to cheer us up. Between the blind faith that everything is all right and the paranoia that the world is out to injure and destroy us lies the realistic acknowledgment that we will probably not get much help in becoming persons from the dominant institutions of our culture. This realistic disappointment could bear good fruit. We might get more actively involved both in creating the life and personhood we want to live and creating the kind of world in which we would like to live it.

Conclusion The seven arguments presented in the middle of this paper have totally convinced me that we become persons largely in and through the qualities of our interaction with others, especially conversations. The last five considerations just given convince me with equal force that steering one’s conversations and one’s life toward genuineness, creativity, compassion, etc., will never be easy. But this struggle is what will allow us to feel more fully alive and more deeply human. The good news is that we can approach all the virtues of full humanness one conversation at a time. Our lives are, among other things, a series of conversations, and therein lies one of the most significant doorways to personal development. We vote with each conversation, both for what kind of person we want to become, and for what kind of world we want the world to be.

The Person I Am Essay

Certain events in my life have molded me to be the person I am today, and define what is unique about me. As a young child I had no respect for others, and could never fully grasp the concept of how people besides myself have feelings, and emotions that matter. I, of course changed this major flaw of mine over time, and matured in to the man I am today, but it was a long road getting here. I wasn’t a sadist, or a psychopath, I just never understood the realm of emotions everyone feels. Nothing dramatic has ever happened to me, I was never bullied, I never lost any loved one, so I never knew what real agony, and what hurt felt like. Until my parents got divorced. I did not get why they were doing it, or why they could so easily break apart …show more content…

In this essay, the author

I pitied him, but I was never discreet with my thoughts back then. He once asked me why all the other kids made such fun of him, and I asked if I really thought he was fat or not. Me, being the egotistical kid I was, said yes you are fat. He ran away from me crying, and he ditched me as a friend. After seeing how hurt he was, I realized just how awful I was. It took me an entire month to work up the courage to apologize to him, but our friendship was never the same. This event in particular changed my life’s perspective. It showed me how simple it is to be a dick, and how I was not going to live my life being that person. Keep in mind I was only in second grade so it was only just the beginning but, I do sometimes still look back at this moment, and become proud of the person I eventually have …show more content…

My Sophomore year I had been dating a very special girl for almost a year when I did the unspeakable to her. I cheated on her with a friend of ours for the period of a month. In that month I was not thinking about what I was doing or how badly she would be hurt if she ever found out. I forgot about all of the emotions attached to this situation, and just let my sixteen hormones take over. She eventually found out, and it destroyed her. How could someone she loved so much do something so awful. This was the first time I had broke down since my parents spilt up. The day she found out I drove her home from school, and she seemed so emotionless, so empty on the inside. I didn’t get how I did this to her. The moment I heard “I’m breaking up with you” was the moment I profusely began crying, and it went on for an hour. Even though she was the one hurting, she held me the entire time trying to comfort me the best she could. She made me realize how deep a persons kindness should go, she changed me into knowing how much it matters to take into account other people’s feelings. She taught me the generosity necessary to be a good human, a great human

Who I am and who I want to become

So my teacher gave an assignment to write an essay about WHO I’M GOING TO BECOME Typical right? But being the procrastinator that I am… I did it three hours before class…. After all how hard can it be? One hour to plan, One hour to draft And one hour to edit I sat there and began to write…write…write…write When class had begun and I handed her the essay I was like "I've been up all night working on this I deserve nothing less than an A” *wink My teacher looked perplexed Trying to figure out what I meant, holding the page of my future Torn from the book of my heart Written by my experiences She said this is a blank page How can you work all night on a blank page? WELL…you see this is not just an ordinary blank page-it is a story It is a story that hasn’t been written yet because it has only just begun And you can’t ask me WHO I’M GOING TO BECOME When I'm now just figuring out WHO I AM WHO I AM as a child, a person, a sister, a citizen, a friend..a neighbour My life wasn’t an easy one…but now But now it’s the time for me to explore To spread my wings like an eagle, head to the sky and soar! Because everything I learnt about life I’ve learnt it from a shopping mall Like don’t wander off on your own Don’t speak to strangers Know who you are and where you came from Never let go of your mother’s hand no matter what you do... And if you get lost Just stand there, stand still, Until someone finds you Until someone notices you Because someone will look for you Because someone will always miss you… Not saying that I don’t have dreams I have dreams... you’d think they were nightmares the way they SSCCRREAAMM!!! Scream for a better world Scream for justice,equality, integrity and love But they really SCREAM for humanity But you already know that dreams were meant for sleeping Martin Luther King had a DREAM but now he’s asleep… dreaming I have no time for dreams Because if i do dream or shut my eyes for too long I‘m afraid that I might lose HER I’d lose Her company, HER love, Her laugh, Her punctuality, Her ups, Her downs And if i lose HER I’d lose I’d lose HER forever And SHE’d slip through my fingers like sand YES… SHE…TIME waits on no one So I was not going to waste her writing this essay Because if I did... I’d be lying And if I did write this essay I’d have to write it in the 3rd person because the 1st one is hurting As I try to hold in the vomit of my tears and wipe the floor to erase my anguish I purge myself to see clearer Because when I look in the mirror All I see a fogged image of WHO I AM Because I don’t know WHO I AM Because I AM TRAPPED!!! Trapped in the castle of my life Guarded by the fiery breathing dragon-my fears Giving the caged bird the option to leave… doesn’t make leaving any easier Giving the answer to a math problem…doesn’t make the workings simpler Giving all your love to someone/something is never a guarantee that they’ll love you back So now isn’t the time for me to make harsh, rash and certain decisions... It’s the time for me to fail, make mistakes and fall on my face over and over- Niagara But through it all I’ll build a foundation, I’ll be able to say YES... I’ve learn from experience and become stronger And by the grace of God my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ I’ll be an overcomer So now when I look into the mirror and stare into my pupils They become pupils and I’ll started to teach myself… I’ll start to teach myself that the most beautiful pieces of art comes from the ugliest of situations, I’ll start to teach myself that flowers bloom after a stormy weather, And that I can’t give a testimony if I don't go through the test And I can’t give you a message if I don't go through the mess… So here is my message to you my dear, poor narrow minded yet certain teacher- with all due respect, I cannot write an essay about WHO I’M GOING TO BECOME when i’m just figuring out WHO I AM….

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The person i am today.

The reason why I chose to be in this class is simply because I want to enhance my life by making it more meaningful. So far in this class, I've learned to value many aspects of life and beliefs. This class truly intrigues me to think about life and ways to enrich it; in other words, to create a more meaningful life. I've slowly started to realize what I want in life and who I am now in contrast to the person I was before. It's incredible to realize how much people (in this case, me) could change over a short period of time. The author of the book Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, went over many important points about creating a meaningful life that I will be covering in the next passages. The author talked about the flow of creativity, multiple intelligence, the macro and microenvironments, the systems model, and the 10 paradoxical traits; all are very important in the creative process, according to the Csikszentmihalyi. . Today, I am a whole new person with a brand new mind. I have got goals and a sense of directions. I know what I want and I am doing what I can to get there. I tend to be more practical now than I was before about life. For example this was what I did most of the time: daydream about becoming a doctor to get status from my friends and family members even though I know for sure that I wouldn't like the job. . Now that brings us to what Csikszentmihalyi says about creativity as autotelic experience, which means to do something with enjoyment rather than for status or for money wise. In order to have enjoyment, there must be a sense of flow in the creative process. Csikszentmihalyi talked about the nine process of flow: it is simply base on how to put everything else aside to just focus on the project itself that one could easily lose track of time. I remember one time I was totally into rearranging my room that I lost track of time, not knowing that I've spent over hours to make my room look nice.

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Being the human I am, I have made many mistakes. ... Not only do these two beings help me live my life they are the reason that I am on the Earth today. ... Without that example in my life taught to me by my mother I probably would not have the same hero that I have mentioned today. ... For me I know a reason why I am here and the things that I have to accomplish, even daily, that helps me go from day to day. ... I know that I would not be the person I am if I did not have the heroes I do and the people I look up to. ...

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