Life Skills - March 3, 2014

Life Skills - March 3, 2014 I really enjoyed March 3rd's class, where Ron was our Prof as Sasha was away. I was initially quite tired, as I'd had trouble sleeping the night before, but I found the content to be interesting as well as Ron's style and possibly even just the change of style (of prof), stimulating. We worked around concepts of thinking and feeling, and how both are essential to constructive communication. Although I felt tired physically, I was still able to stay engaged. I hadn't slept well the night before, and I was a bit upset about correspondence with a teacher, I had had earlier in the day,where I found the info she shared to be inconsistent and illogical and minimally offensive. I found the class and some of its content, to be almost helpful in processing and letting go of some of that frustration I was carrying. This subject, of how thinking and feeling both effect and our key to, communication, is one that I have previously researched. Ive done a lot of studying the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, where cognitive, personal and communication preferences are tested. One of the categories is Thinking / Feeling, and while we all of course access both 'preferences' we do most often lean towards one state and preference, being stronger. I am quite a strong T in the myers briggs type test. My full profile is INTP. A great online test is at http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm I learnt the most from the 'describing feelings statements', where there was a multiple choice test of sentences describing a feeling, and where one statement was deemed most effective. In the exercise statements that did NOT include 'I feel...' were noted as the most effective. I found this interesting, and I think many others did too, as it seems we may have been somewhat trained to express ourselves in "I feel " statements, generally to avoid offending others, or to avoiding portraying our perceptions as confirmed reality (instead of possibility). I learnt that stating your feelings, can be just as concrete as stating the weather. For example, when going through the statements options, it seemed to me that saying 'Im really shocked by what you just said' was more effective than 'I feel your rudeness is inexcusable', even thought the 'I feel' statement includes the identifying self as feeling such and such. Now apart from the fact that the 2nd statement attaches a negative statement such as ones behaviour being inexcusable, it also doesn't name the speakers feeling. So what I drew from this, (and other similar examples) was that this part of naming the feeling itself,in this case 'shocked' is most important. It could be said 'I feel really shocked by what you just said' which is most likely how i would say it, since the 'i feel ' statements are a habit of mine. (perhaps due to extensive therapy, haha) What I might do differently, is to have us slightly more involved in practising this type of communication, by coming up with some of our own 'statements' to then discuss and analyze. We also worked on concepts around 'giving feedback' which I also found super interesting. I really noticed how my skills in being able to receive and give feedback, can strongly vary depending on who I am interacting with. I was able to identify that I'd strongly like to work more on aligning this skill, and becoming better at being receptive to feedback at all times. Ron shared concepts around feedback, and how permission to give feedback should first be attained, before launching in. He said he likes to use statements such as 'Can i tell you something' when speaking with someone that he would like to offer feedback too. I like how this sounds, and i REALLY like the idea of getting cosent before sharing personal feedback with someone.