Life's Challenges

After going over the readings from this week, I must say the one thing that stood out to me was the three solutions to lightening up. The reason being is because at this point in my life I feel there are a lot of things that are “pulling” me in different directions, I have a part time job as a recreational leader at The Boys & Girls Club, I’m a walk-on, and I am a college student. All these things have their own agenda and I am expected to put forth my best effort in all these areas despite what is going on outside of these things. I continuously feel that I am overloaded with too much to deal with; but the three solutions that I can put to use with these daily activities can help me handle my stress levels and change my outlook on my job, school, and basketball. As I stated in a previous blog I posted this week, the first solution of distinguishing work and play and viewing work as something we do for the sake of something else could help me with me recreational duties. The second solution of changing the way I feel about everyday activities would help with my school work. I feel this could help because with this solution implemented in this area for the simple fact school work is an everyday activity for a college student, so we might as well enjoy doing it. Then lastly, the third solution of integration could help with my walk-on situation.  Because as I stated before I am beginning to understand I may not achieve the things I want to with basketball without going through struggle. As it says in the readings “joy and pain are often found in the same place”. 

Expressing My Anger

I am a person who simply does not express my anger until a certain extent. I tend to hold my anger in and comtinue to let it build until I cannot withstand my aggression any more. It takes a lot to get me angry, but once I reach that point where I cannot hold my anger in, sometimes everyone catch my wrath. When I was younger I used to have an anger problem and I blew up in every situation. I took anger management to curtail my fury and it stopped me from blowing up on people when I get angry, but now I have a bad habit of holding my anger in. The outcome of holding in my anger usually results in me keeping to myself and not expressing to others how I really feel. However, when I do finally blow up I do so in aggressive manner, slandering and ostracizing the person that made me angry. I know it is not healthy for me to keep my aggression inside that’s why I blow up very rarely on people because I do not like others to experience that side of me.

The Three Solutions

As a college student my daily life always seems to be to stressful to handle. Most of the time it seems like I don’t have time for anything; work, school, and basketball seems to just leave me with so much stress. But after reading chapter 7, I do see where I can implement the three solutions to help deal with my stress situation. The first solution could help me when it comes to my school work. I feel this could help because I do need to understand the severity of gaining an education is and also realize that even though times will get tough I’m doing it for the “sake” of obtaining a successful future. Now when it comes to dealing with the stress that comes with my job I should definitely focus on the second solution. This solution states that a way to lighten up is to view that play is an attitude of mind that may pervade any human activity. To me this simply means to relax and have some fun. Even though my part time job as can be stressful, it’s not as bad as I make it, and sometimes if I don’t go there with the wrong type of attitude I wouldn’t be stressed out so much. Lastly the third solution, integration, is to understand that joy and pain often are found in the same place. Being a walk on can be very stressful. You make a team and have to do everything scholarship players do but aren’t even guaranteed to play or even be on the team the next year.  But I do need to and have been beginning to understand that success isn’t achieved without struggle, and I know where I am it doesn’t dictate where I am going. 

The threat of Distrust

To me this week's readings were very interesting. But out of all the topics covered, the threat of distrust stood out to me the most. Learning that distrust and unhealthy trust can both be detrimental to any type of relationship and can contribute to a harmful conflict situation was eye opening to me. Not as if I didn't know not trusting someone can mess two people's relationship up. But because the booked talked about the motives and reason why someone is considered distrustful or why you have an unhealthy trust issue with them. This entire chapter though was very helpful for me. I have a lot of trust issues and this helped me better understand them. Understand them in a sense of how to deal with them and how I should probably go about fixing some of them. I do understand the ramifications of not having trust in people, and hopefully I can make some changes with some of them to better our relationship. But don’t get me wrong, some lines should never be crossed. 

Unbalanced Power

I never had to think about how I felt being in a relationship where someone has more or less power. But after reading this chapter, I must say I have been both the one with and without the power, and the feelings you get from both of them are totally different. 
A situation where I’m mostly the one with less power, my relationship with my mom sticks out. You see my mom, no matter how old I get, is still my mom. So most of the time what she says goes. Sometimes when there is a conflict or disagreement between the two of us, confronting her about it or talking to her about it is challenging. Because both she and I know no matter what, her way is the way I will follow most of the time. In a sense you feel, helpless because you know what the other person says goes in situations like this. Feeling more powerful, generally gives me a feeling that I think most like. The feeling of knowing you have influence over how a situation plays out. Being the one with the power, I see now, can be both bad and good. Good in the sense that what you say is kind of what goes. Also if you know what's best, you have the power to influence the other party your way is the best way. But bad because, sometimes it ends up just you looking like a bully. I feel there is a correct balance between having too much or too little power, and if you figure out the medium between the two your can have a healthy relationship with another person regardless of the circumstances.

Trust Issues

Trust has been an issue for me since I was a little kid. There have been many times where I’ve lost trust for someone, but I must say the one that hurts the most is the trust I lost in my uncle. I won’t get to personal, but he basically disrespected my mother and my family during the time of my father’s death. I reacted in a bad way and became very angry with him because of this. The damaged he caused was so severe that till this day we don’t speak to him. Our trust with each other was not and still isn’t restored. Like the book states, “we trust others when we think they have our best interest at heart and do not wish to hurt us”. All these things that apply to trust is what I felt he violated. Lines were crossed that shouldn’t have been, and because of this I believe I can never trust him again.