Blog Post #11

I would describe my personality as being unique. I tend to go on my own and do my own things. I am easy to get along with and love meeting new people. I am nice to everyone, no matter what race, sex, or size someone is. I believe that I am fun to be around and always make a good time out of things. I love to try new things no matter what. At times, I can be shy if I don’t know the people around me, but when I do get to know them I open up a lot and show my true colors of having a sense of humor. When awkward moments occur, I always laugh and try to make it less awkward, either by making a joke out of it or just change the subject completely. I understand how people are feeling just by looking at them; therefore, I try to get them to open up to me. I am willing to hear people’s problems and love to give them advice; therefore, I would say I am helpful in such situations. I would also say that I am mature/serious at times when I need to be. If I see someone acting inappropriate, I feel embarrassed and try to persuade him or her into acting his or her age. Although, I will admit I can be immature when being around my friends. I love to laugh and joke around. I try to make dull moments fun. Five traits I would consider to be positive of myself are dedication, toughness, responsibility, humor, and honesty. Three things I consider to being negative about myself are I am very gullible, sensitive to people’s comments, and stubborn. Dedication is positive because it allows you to become extremely knowledgeable and loyal to what you’re dedicated to. Dedication is needed in a job, relationships, and education. If you were not dedicated, you would never stick to one thing, therefore, you appear flighty. You would also not have much of a future because you would never know if your plan would have worked or not. Toughness is positive because it allows me to bounce back from hardships and allows me to solve my own problems in my own way. I can rely on myself because I know I am tough enough to accomplish what needs to be done without relying on others. Responsibility is positive because others can rely on me to do my part. In the future, I will probably handle adult situations like credit cards, bills, and job duties with the same responsibility that I handle my homework with today. If you weren’t responsible, you would never get your work done and would not be trusted with large and important tasks including a good job. Humor is positive because it allows you to get through life’s tough situations and helps others get through. Humor makes you likeable and helps you take life less seriously. It’s proven to be healthy for your heart. It can turn bad situations into bearable. It also can reduce someone’s stress. Lastly, honesty is a positive trait to have because it is the basis for trust. Honesty in relationships keeps them positive and strong. Honesty is necessary for you to have and keep many friends because they will go to you for your opinions and for your suggestions. Honesty in a job makes you valuable and a good employee. If you weren’t honest, relationships, jobs, and friends would always be unstable. Being gullible is negative because you believe things event though they are not true. People take advantage of you if you’re gullible and will likely lie to you because they will believe that you will believe them. If you are gullible, you are likely to lose money as an adult because there are many scam artists out there. If you were told a story that is not true, you could pass it on to someone else. When you believe silly things, you appear to be dumb and not taken seriously. Being sensitive to people’s comments is negative because it would make it easy to blow up at someone. When a person gets hurt easily, they tend to withdraw from social situations or backstab. This confuses others and makes them think twice about being your friend. It also appears to be rude. Lastly, stubbornness is a negative trait to have because it prevents you from thinking of all the sides of the situation. When you insist that you are right and refuse to bend, others tend to withdraw from you and see you as inflexible. If you are stubborn, you could also lose out and lose your opportunities to experience things even if you wanted to do them, but were too stubborn to agree.

In my opinion, I would not consider myself as an optimist. I would consider my level of optimism as being very low. Whenever I compete in a competition or have a test in school, I always assume the worst. Even when I feel I may do ok in something, I always say out loud that I’m going to do bad or fail. I say this because I don’t want to feel the disappointment if I would fail or do bad. Even when I do bad and say I will do badly, I still feel disappointed in myself. It irritates me when people are always optimistic. It seems like they are high on themselves and I don’t like that about people. I dislike how people could feel so strongly about themselves. They also seem like they think that they are better than everyone else. I would consider myself to have a high degree of pessimism. For example, I always assume the worst. When it is likely that school will be cancelled do to bad snow days, I never allow myself to believe that it will be cancelled. This allows me to be prepared for the worse. Therefore, my disappointments would not be as high as they would be if I had planned for the best. This impacts my life because it bothers the people around me when I constantly say I am going to do badly. For example, when I tell my friends that I’m going to fail my Adv.Chemistry test, they get annoyed by me and tell me that I will do just fine. I have a tendency to repeat myself over and over when I am stressed, therefore I irritate them. They sometimes will tell me to be quiet and let it go. Another example when I use a pessimistic attitude is when I am competing in a rodeo, which means a lot to me, I will get extremely nervous. Everyone has big expectations of me, which makes it even harder. I don’t want to disappoint them nor myself. I will say I will do badly to them so they don’t expect much of me. I do this because even if I am trying my best and still have a bad run, they won’t be as disappointed. I am a perfectionist and work hard to do my best in everything I do. I will think about bad things that happen to me for a very long time and try to think what I did wrong or how I could have done them better. Though pessimism usually prevents people from trying new things, it has not done that for me; it simply makes it better if I would happen to do well.

I have a trait of stubbornness that changes depending on the situation I am in. I may be in a very stubborn, unmovable position where I am taking a stand against my mother’s orders. However, if a male friend walks in during the stand-off, I am likely to back down and let it go. The situation changes because of the person who hears what is going on. When someone who does not know me personally enters the situation and sees my stubbornness, I am able to assess the situation more thoroughly from the eye of a stranger and back down. Suddenly, my stand does not seem so important. However, this would not change if it was a stand that upheld my deep values. No matter who saw the situation unfold, I would not give in if my values were at stake. This is adaptive because the level of stubbornness changes based on the importance of the situation. My trait of dedication also changes depending on who or what my dedication is for. If I am dedicated to a person who has continually proven to be trustworthy, then this dedication is warranted. If the person I am dedicated to proves to be untrustworthy, then my dedication changes and wanes. This is adaptive because it allows us to protect ourselves from destructive people or environments. We reap the benefits of allowing ourselves to dissolve our dedication or stubbornness based on new information gained. Assessing the situation and being able to change because of it is always beneficial.

One big defense mechanism I use is projection in which I throw insults at a person that takes them off guard and prevents them from hurling insults at me. I try to stun them and embarrass them. This takes the focus off of me and prevents me from being hurt more. Of course, I usually pay for it in the end because our conflict continues for several days. Projection is a way people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. I also often rationalize my actions by creating explanations that make what I do seem right. For example, I often blame my horse for not behaving when I actually am directing my horse to do what he does through my sloppy riding. By saying my horse is not behaving, I am taking the blame off of my riding ability. Rationalization offers a justification for the real reason for one’s actions. I also use displacement, which is directing your feelings toward someone or something that is less threatening. Sometimes, when I am angry at my friend, I will go home and yell at my mom for no good reason. She eventually yells back, which makes it feel like I am also angry at her. This displacement of emotions allows me an outlet that is safer and will not result in the loss of a friend.