It Is All In The Reaction

I just realized that I didn't write for Friday's class... oops

Okay anyway, Tuesday's class was one of the best classes that I have been to in a long time. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for being so supportive in my situation and for giving me some good feedback. One thing I realized after the class was that I am so thankful to be apart of a Christian college. There are not many schools that would pray for someone's needs, even if they didn't know them, like we did at the end of class Tuesday. Honestly, it touched me so much to have the love and support from my classmates and I don't know if I will ever be able to truly show you how much your support means to me.

When we started talking about working on communication with people, I realized that it is a lot harder than it sounds. Communication is not an easy thing to do, but we need to learn how to effectively communicate in order to live a successful life with successful relationships. When we discussed respecting what others say about feelings and thoughts, I was very intrigued. Often times when people try to help others, the conversation always becomes one sided and the focus is shifted on the person trying to help and their views. I especially agreed with not speaking for others. You cannot tell someone what they think or how they feel, or how they should think or feel. It is all up to the person who is having the problems to say how they feel. When I have had people try to help me with certain problems, they have tried to tell me how to feel about it. And that just bothers me because that is not what respecting other's feelings and thoughts is all about. Respect is a fully loaded word that is not used in the right context all of the time. Many of my friends are bad at not repsecting what I say because they do not agree with me. Well, then don't be my friend if you can't respect what I say. That's how I feel about it.

Another thing that we discussed that was interesting was the fact that we should take responsibility for our actions and responses. When everyone in the class said that you can't help how someone makes you feel, I agreed with them. The only reason I really agree with them is because it is hard to control how others make you feel. But, on the other hand I disagree because when I was in high school all of the guys liked to pick on me. They weren't mean to me, they just said things that they would know would upset me. It was more of the reaction that I gave them that would cause them to pick on me. Therefore, I could control how I reacted because if I would have just let their comments slide off my shoulders then the guys wouldn't have picked on me as much, I don't think. Honestly, in my opinion, it is all about how you react to something that determines if the instances reoccur or not!