Self Project

Twenty-five Interesting Aspects of Myself
1. I love ceramics.
2. I prefer the outdoors, but not in New York City.
3. I get angry about things I wish I didn’t.
4. I am a cat person.
5. I prefer gold to silver.
6. I like earth tones.
7. I love rocks, especially when they are wet.
8. I like having plants inside.
9. I get cold easily.
10. I like sleeping with as many blankets as possible.
11. I am more like my father than my mother.
12. I am closer with my mother than my father.
13. My fingers on my left hand are skinnier.
14. I don’t like turtlenecks.
15. I am extremely emotional.
16. I don’t really know my heritage.
17. I have no cousins.
18. I think horses are one of the most beautiful animals.
19. I like old Volvos.
20. I get excited about seasons before they come but tire of them quickly.
21. I have a pear shaped body.
22. I’ve never broken a bone.
23. I don’t believe in god.
24. I contact to be meaningful.
25. I like being barefoot.

Three Strengths
1. My focus.
2. Interacting in new situations.
3. Observing what is going on around me.

Three Weaknesses
1. My patients.
2. Getting upset over unimportant things.
3. Isolating myself and worrying about happiness.

One Aspect to Change
Getting upset over unimportant things.

Observation
I get upset over all sorts of things that are out of my control and are not going to change if I get upset. There is a difference in getting upset because some has done something that deserves to be considered in such a way that someone’s anger might change that situation and getting upset over something that it is in the past and that getting angry over it wont change anything. For example, when people do things that disrupt plans, getting upset over their lateness wont change the fact that they were late. The best thing in that case would be to move on. Part of not getting upset about things has to involve figuring out how important matters are.

My Goal – One Paragraph
My goal in this self-project is to avoid getting upset or aggravated over unimportant things. I hope to develop a way of making distinct and rational decisions about what is worth getting upset about and what is not. Aside from having the problem of getting upset over unimportant things on a frequent basis, I hope to not feel so bad in the end. Each time I get upset, I then have a moment where I beat myself up for getting upset in the first place, in turn I just feel even worse. I want to become a calmer person, who doesn’t allow other people actions to impact my emotions.

My Goal – One Sentence
My goal is to develop a way to allow myself to remain calm and not let other peoples minor actions affect my emotions.

Four Actions Plans
1. Find things to do so I have an alternative thing to do, rather than let other people’s agendas impact my own.
2. Think about what upsets me, take a deep breath, and find a positive alternative for each upsetting aspect.
3. Don’t anticipate getting upset, wait for it to happen and then address the issue.
4. Think about why I am upset and express it concisely.

One Action Plan
Don’t anticipate anything, when a situation comes that would upset me take a deep breath, think about why it is upsetting, express my emotions concisely, and then let the issue go. Reminder: You can’t change the past; dwelling on it does nothing to help you.

Results
My results are subjective and really only base on how I feel about getting upset. I think there were several situation in which I would have considered myself following an alternative plan to my usual to avoid getting upset, and would count those as successful actions. On the other hand, I was not completely successful; my peers could definitely argue that I did get upset at times.

Specific Examples:

Example One: Rather than come home and pressure my mother to cook dinner when I was hungry, like I usually would and the proceed to get upset when I got hungrier waiting for dinner, I decided that I wouldn’t bother my mother, I would make dinner myself. When dinner was done, no one was home to eat it so I sat down by myself and began to eat, rather than getting upset that no one was there when I was ready to eat. When Later, when my mother made a big deal about me making dinner, rather than tell her it was irritating, I said nothing, and sure enough the moment passed and she stopped making such a big deal.

While I consider thing a situation that could have gone either way, and I avoided getting annoyed or upset several times in the evening I don’t think it was truly following my action plan. In no case did I express myself; instead I just refrained from saying anything.

Example Two: This weekend when I had an argument with a friend about their actions one night, they took it to mean something more than it was and the following morning asked me if we were having bigger issues. My interpretation of the situation the night before was that it was just a minor disagreement, and I wasn’t comfortable with this person taking it to mean something much bigger. I expressed myself, telling them that I felt upset about them feeling this way, that what they thought wasn’t true. I wasn’t sure how much they considered what I had said and I didn’t feel assure that they were happy with where we stood in terms of having a problem or not. At this point I has expressed myself but wasn’t sure how to move on without that other person moving on. That is what I feel I truly failed because that was the point in which I shut down and got more upset. Eventually the feelings of disappoint dissipated, but I know that I could have moved on better, and taken more action to not have spent a good potion of time worrying about a non-existent problem.

Example Three: On Friday afternoon, I had hoped to meet up with someone after school but our plans didn’t fall in sync with each other’s. Instead of getting impatient and upset, I took the time to do something I wanted to do for myself. The time passed and soon enough we ended up meeting up, and I accomplished something while finding some time to myself.

Again, in this situation I avoided feeling bad in a situation where I could have but I didn’t use my intended plan of action, I didn’t express myself.

Evaluation
I think that overall my action plan was unsuccessful. When I tried to apply it to my daily life, the specific plan I had made didn’t really work out. In my case, there were many situations where I realized that there were alternatives that I could decide to opt instead of taking something to the point where I get upset and express my feelings. I also think that I made a plan that was specific to one sort of situation where I find myself getting upset and drastic about a problem but that I my plan didn’t cater to smaller issues, which is what I was really trying to target when I decided to change something about myself.

In the future, I think that I should have one main goal and multiple plans of actions that would cater to a variety of different issues I find myself facing. Instead of always expressing myself, I think I should first work on going back and defining what is worth expressing and what isn’t. I think in many cases I would not find it necessary to express anything and that would save me some hassle. Another problem I realized when I found myself expressing some of my emotion, was that there is a bigger problem that often leads me to be unhappy and get upset. But if I were to take on worrying about that I think that addressing the bigger problems in my life would require that to be the goal, and rather than worrying about not getting upset I could focus on finding a way to solve major issues that lead me to being unhappy, which lead me to getting upset more often.

As a result of this self-project, I think I will continue to work on not getting upset about things and simultaneously work on another action plan to address and attack some of the bigger things that are bothering me in my life. I think that my next goal would be to find more happiness, which will cure a lot of the smaller issues I had. It only took trying to solve my smaller issues to realize that there are bigger ones that need to come first.