alyssanicole

I know that most of us has been imagining what we are going to be at the tender age of 5. Some of us might have even said " I'm going to become a Policeman", "I wanna be Doctor", so on and so forth. But as we grow up, our choices and goals in life change. As we become mature, we started to consider our capabilities, attitude, and even our financial aspects upon choosing our future professions. And honestly ,I am one of those people who are struggling to choose between passion and practicality of our chosen career. But whatever your choices are, as long as you are willing to commit, dedicate and sacrifice everything to it then you can do whatever you want to and be successful in life.

Having a family is a blessing. It may be that not everyone's family are picture perfect, having conflicts, financial problems and the likes, it what's make the bond of the family stronger. As we grow up, we may have witnessed the struggles of our parents, being poor that we were having difficulty on where/how to find/earn our daily expenses, or that having a bumpy relationship with our family. And with that, some of us may have promised to themselves that they should build a family like these, like that and they're not going to experience what they've been through. I think that maybe most of us, if not all, have our own ideal family. In my case, my ideal family is an upgraded version of our family today. I decided that I'm going to focus on our family since I haven't decided yet if I wanted to tie a knot with someone,someday. My ideal family is that everyone one of us has already achieved our dreams,our goals. My parents are both happy and contented of what we have achieved and experienced in life. My ideal family, to sum it up, is just to be happy and contented. We may have all of the material things we want in life but not all of us are able to achieve that happiness and contentment of what we have at the moment.

Family is the basic unit of a society. They have been always in our lives, from birth to adulthood, guiding and shaping us into what we are today. Though, as the saying says, "Blood is thicker than water", not everyone of us has the smoothest relationship with our families. Some are very much detached or perhaps don't agree with a certain family member or maybe with the whole family. It is very much important to build and establish relationship with our family. In my personal opinion, it really bothers me to the core if I'm having conflict maybe with my Ma or Pa or my siblings. Taking an initiative to build a close and good relationship with our families is a good start to have a good, if not great, relationship with them. And with a good family relationship, it reflects to having a peaceful society.

"No man is an island." As the saying goes, a person's whole identity isn't complete without establing relationship with others. We are what we are because we belong in a society where we have built our characters as individuals as we grow up. We belong into a community, a society, where we have different responsibilities and roles to accomplish with a goal to help each other when in need and also establish camaraderie to be united.

I have learned a lot and had so much fun with our lesson today. I just noticed that most of my classmates were very participative with the discussion maybe because they were able to relate and experience firsthand of being in a romantic relationship with someone. Building a relationship or being romantically involved with someone is quite normal for the adolescents as they become mature and inevitably notice someone they find suitable as their boyfriend/girlfriend because they love the feeling of being inlove and to be loved by that person they chose as their partner. That being said, everyone one of us has different love languages. You have to be sensitive and attentive to your loved ones on how to express your love for them so they can feel that you truly appreciate their existence. Being inlove and be loved by the people you love the most is the best feeling in this world after all.

We can't control the way we think most of the time. Our mental stability is determined through the way we think. Our mental health is very essential for our well-being. Not only it affects our mentality but also our physical, emotional and spiritual health. Sometimes, the way we think is also influenced by the standards of our society. We tend to overthink everything that we've accomplished in our life. We sometimes belittle ourselves because we're not able to meet the expectations from the people around us. Valuing our mental health start from within ourselves. We should stop comparing ourselves from others. We must not harbor negativity in our life but rather surround ourselves with people and things that can bring us positivity. We must let go of the things that tie us up with bitterness and unsatisfaction with ourselves. Instead, we have to have purpose in life, we must be self-accepting, have positive relation with others and the likes to become mentally/ psychologically stable and healthy.

We face challenges everyday. Be it untangling your bird's nest of a hair. Cooking your breakfast early. Listening to the discussion during classes while fighting off sleepiness. Getting your activity sheets done. There are lots of it with different kind, with different level. The more challenging the situation is, the more that you will be stressed. Stress is the reaction of the body to a demand or challenge that requires your immediate attention. If you happen to face a problem that you can't solve, you become stressed and fruatrated.According to Hans Selye," it is not the stress that kill us but our reaction to it". As challenges causes stress, it is inevitable for us to cope up with it. We need to be calm and rational in solving our problems as to not result to bad stress that can affect our over-all health. There are actually a lot of ways to irradicate or can lessen the burden of stress to us. One of it is to have me-time. Giving yourself a retreat in solitude to enjoy the calmness and peacefulness and help us not to get much stimulated by stress. Eventhough there are lots of challenges coming to us, we sometimes need to stop and free up all the thoughts that are troubling us to keep sane. It is rather effective that way because as what saying says, "you can do anything, but not every thing". To make a sound desicion and response, we need to be calm and rational. And in order to be calm and rational, we need to relax and exhale the stress and inhale positivity

The 12 year old me once said " I can't wait to become an adult. Once I become a grown-up woman, I can do anything I want". Such an impatient and curious thing I was then. Now that I'm nearing the legality stage, I just wanted to go back from being a child, joyful and free from worries and problems. As we reach adolescence, it's just natural to face challenges and problems along the way. But this time, unlike when we were still a kid, we are expected to become responsible. We must know how to respond to the challenges, know how to make wise decisions. Though it is inevitable for us to make mistakes, we must learn from it. Although we're slowly turning from a young girl/boy into a woman/man, it does not signify that we're able to grasp the challenges being thrown to us. We need to take action, an initiative, in solving our own problems. We can also ask our grown ups for advice and take it constructively to develop and improve ourselves.Maturity is not measured by age. Being mature means you have the attitude to react to your problems rationally. Experiences brings out maturity. And in facing the bumps in our life, we need to endure and persevere. As what the saying says, when life throws you lemons, make a lemonade. In short, you can't turn lemons into lemonades by itself. You have to take action in order for you to have the satisfying outcome, the result that you wanted to go your way.

The older that we get, the more we are becoming conscious to the things that are happening around us. We are curious beings that it is natural for us to explore new things in which sometimes, can incite an overwhelming emotions and feelings. Most of the time that we face difficult situations and we don't know how to respond to it. As we enter adolescence, the responsible 'us' is slowly unfolding. We gradually become more mature in how we see life, how to solve problems and becoming rational, not easily influenced by the strong emotions we sometimes experience that can either have positive or negative effect in making sound decision.We may not notice it but in our everyday lives, we develop and improve ourselves unconsciously. We observe and learn from other people in order for us to have a wise decision in life. We have always wanted ourselves to develop, to improve,to become healthy mentally,physically,spiritually,emotionally, to live life in harmony.

"Don't judge the book by it's cover". As what the saying implies, we cannot tell the entirety of other people's character, what kind of a person they are by just simply seeing their physical appearance,the way they act around people ,and the likes. We all have different personalities that mark our difference from each other ,which makes each one of us special. We are all unique in our owns ways. We are unique not just because we are different from each other ,it is also because of the people we surround ourselves with , our environment and the way we look and respond to the challenges life gave to us which made up our character as a whole.

Knowing one’s self is not easy. Some of us rely on other’s perception and opinions to be aware of our attitude, how do we react on certain situations and how do they describe us as an individual. Each one of us has unique characteristics but  sometimes, we can’t help but compare ourselves from other people that can either have positive or negative result to our self-esteem. In today’s lesson, I have learned about self-awareness. Self-awareness helps us asses ourselves, how to reflect to our shortcomings and make this imperfection into a positive trait to improve ourselves as a person. Just like what Aristotle said “ Knowing yourself is the beginning of wisdom”.