i love you by the heart♥

Over the course of three weeks, I have learnt many things about myself, much of which we totally neglect. I shall begin with the most crucial yet often the most neglected one.

Listening- we are listening everyday and we listen to many different sounds and voices. Yet how we respond to these sounds are varied and sometimes can cause rise to misunderstandings. Who said that only SPEAKING will cause problems, surprisingly listening too! I was pretty appalled by my results upon completing my Listening Self-Assignment which was only an “AVERAGE” grade. Hmm...I thought I was a good listener till this little exercise actually brought to my concerns that I had so many flaws.

My flaws:
- I tend to not paraphrase what i believe the speaker is feeling
- I would always form a rebuttal in my head while the speaker is talking
- I would always help people to complete their sentence

These were my 3 major problems and yet I thought that they shouldn’t be. To me, I always thought that putting feelings especially negative ones into a conversation was wrong; however I never thought that a person would express most of their feelings through a simple conversation. Also, with a very dominant character by nature, I always wanted to win or to say something to impress people or get their attention thus resulting with a strong rebuttal in my mind every time someone else speaks. Lastly, my English used to be of a better standard than others and I always felt they my vocabulary bank was more profound than other, so again the ego-istic me would lend a helping hand in completing sentences for my peers however, not considering their feelings or bothering about if that was the real message my friends wanted to get across.

This was one situation which caught me in a spot due to the lack of my listening skills. One day, among my friends, we planned a trip to go on a shopping spree. On the way we had many small talks between ourselves. This friend of mine who was not very expressive by nature was trying to share with us her displeasure about another of my close friend. She was very expressive by then and I could see a lot of feelings being shown by her yet I choose to ignore her feelings because I felt that she was over-exaggerating and that she was talking about my close friend. I started to question her about why she had this displeasure and even before she could give me her reply, I was already telling her how good that friend actually was and that it was she herself who was causing problems. I was not very tactful when I spoke too and thus she stopped talking- she couldn’t even complete her sentence. Till date, we still have not spoken to each other even when we meet or happen to pass by one another.

I had actually forgotten about this whole incident until the lesson of Understanding You and Me- Effective Listening was brought about. When I was made to recall of this situation, I felt very regretful. Never would I think that just a small insensitivity on my part would result in me losing a good friend. This was a lesson learnt the hard way for me, to show me the importance of practising effective listening. Perhaps the sacrifice of a friendship was worth it, considering the many more people I would be interacting with through the next few decades of my life =)

Gracia Chua
+]tHe mAn[+**

Boy , I Love You .
5:07 PM

Self esteem

Walking along the roads of the city, I see many people. People of different sizes, different heights, different races, different looks, different ways people carry themselves and different “first impressions” people leave on me. I have high expectations of myself and I believe confidence is the utmost importance of one’s life. Just like any other person, I want to set the BEST first impression. I carry myself genuinely but sometimes with a tinge of haughtiness. I leave my house always well dressed, not sloppy. I speak to strangers politely and with a proud aura. Yet with my friends, I am a cheerful and mischievous person. However, my pride often is my down fall. I tend to be a perfectionist. I always want to be right. I always want to win.

But I have learnt. AH!!! The importance of friends. They are always there to remind you. When you fall, they are always there to remind you about where you have gone wrong. Yet, we are talking about self esteem. These is where friends can make you are break you. Once being fat, I had very low self esteem. I would be afraid to go out, speak to people and worst still, I was afraid of making friends. Everything people said to me could affect me easily. Why? Because I was different. I was fat.When you have friends who accept you the way you are, you will be comfortable being around people. However when friends make negatives remarks about you or even laughing at you can lower all of one’s self esteem.

We always tell people that they can think about whatever they want and that we do not care, but when they actually do so can we really accept it? All these are about self esteem. Simply being proud can easily lift up one’s self esteem but is it really the perfect solution? Or is it better for one to be fully genuine for people to trust and in the end be made used of due to innocence.
There is so much to ponder, so much to learn, so many solutions. Yet one solution leads to another question or maybe another problem. Likewise is self esteem. It does not stop here neither does it remain the same. We can only learn more about ourselves and be self- acceptant for if we cannot accept ourselves, how can we people expect people to accept us for who we are. We are not super heroes, we can’t please everyone. Being bad in one person’s point of view does not mean that you are bad to another hundred people. Life is where opinions are made so don’t take them to heart or too hard. Well.... continue to ponder.....

Life really is beautifully made, but it is not that beautiful....hmm... ... =)

Gracia Chua
+]tHe mAn[+**

Boy , I Love You .
11:06 AM

Life is like an ORANGE

You'll never know when it is going to be sweet or sour, just like the happiness and bitterness in our lives.

It may look good on the surface but it may taste sour.this is similar as to how life may not turn out as positive as expected.

Or, like a mandarin orange, it has an ugly crumpled skin but it taste very sweet. this is just like when we are feeling down, we always will end up with a GREAT outlook.

Just live life as it is and be as BRIGHT as an ORANGE =)

signing of,
Gracia Chua
+] tHe mAn[+**
T15

Boy , I Love You .
12:52 AM