Best-Self Portrait

| Learning Project 1, Part 4-6 | | | LP1, Part 4: What are others' experiences of me when I am my best? Phase 1: Creating the Reflected Best-Self Portrait When I am at best, I help people. I motivate myself and feel motivated when I get to help others. Whether it’s a stranger, colleague, friends, or family, I feel my passion in assisting those in need. As long as it’s within my capability and moral belief that what people ask for help is ethical and legal, I give them my attention and time. I feel happy that I am able to give a hand, and I feel happy to see people become happy with the help I give them.Helping others put smiles on my face and also on them as well. I feel proud of myself that I have the power to help the others. For families and friends, I am always open for help and be supportive. I believe that if there are people out there who love to help, there will be many people who will return the helping spirit to other people. I always try to be responsible wit h tasks I have been given, and also be responsible with myself. I believe it is important to have trusts and both independence and dependence to others. Being responsible is an important part of me.When I make a promise, I try my best to keep the promise because it is my responsibility. I am persistent and drive myself to bring the end result, a good result, of things I was responsible for. As an employee, I hold onto the responsibilities as an employee to provide my best in each shift, and do all the tasks given by my supervisor and managers. It is in my best interest to never lose any reason to not smile. I try to find reasons to smile everywhere and every day, whether the reason involves weather, my job, friends, or smaller things like I woke up early for the day.So I make reasons to be optimistic, to start the day content and positive. I know that it’s important for me to stay positive and find things to be happy about. I love having opportunities to learn new things and experience and gain new skills. The fact that there still are opportunities for new experiences is important to me. Because I think these opportunities are getting less as you get older, I try my best to grab every opportunity I can do learn new skills that are practical in the future.When an opportunity is shown to me, I commit myself until I achieve in grabbing that opportunity and absorb everything I can do to face new challenges and learn. I adapt to the new circumstances and am open-minded to different things. I may not be competitive, but I am ambitious to get things done and be successive at it. I stay focused on what I have started and never give up until I complete the task. I am a hard-worker, who tries the best to achieve success. As long as I don’t bring negative effects around me in the process, I don’t only give up but also continue to put my best effort to be triumphant.I stay focused. My family is important to me. Because I can’t see them often o r regularly, I am more loyal to them than ever. I care and cherish them. I express my love in many different ways. I let them know I still love them no matter how far I am now today. I support them mentally and orally; I let some tension and troubles away from them; and I always stay responsive to them. When asked for help, I am enthusiastic to help them the best I can. I feel responsible to love them and be a supportive family member to them as they are to me.Like it is my job to love and be dutiful to my parents as a daughter, my job is exactly the same for all the other family members. I am a good friend. I am a good listener, listening to my friends’ problems and worries. I support my friends but I know when to be honest and realistic, with the purpose of helping them Patterns/Themes| Declaration| Examples Given| Helpful| I believe in being selfless, making small differences, putting smiles on others’ faces, being compassionate, and have a heart to help. | 1. Helpi ng Coral out, with the Calgary geography2. Listen to Danny's concerns and problems. Responsible| I believe in giving trust and confidence to others. I believe in being trustworthy, reliable, and accountable to my actions and behaviors, regardless of situations. | 1. Being the daughter to my parents. 2. Be responsible as an employee and a co-worker to help and provide fitting skills at Swarovski. | Supportive| I believe in backing up the people I care about, encouraging them, helping them, defending them, and loving them. | 1. Encouraging and complimenting Coral and her new place. 2. Compliment and Recommending the trendy styles to Danny. Adaptable| I believe in the power to adapt to new surroundings and situations, learning new skills and experiences to make them my own. | 1. Adapting to the new country, new city and new language when first immigrated to Canada. 2. Adapting to the new atmosphere of working places when got the job at the Swarovski. | Ambitious| I believe in being com passionate and eager to have goals, work hard, and successfully achieve them. | 1. Accepting new responsibilities and tasks at work. 2. Got in to the school band, to let off my flute skills. | Loyal| I believe in loving my families, giving them my time and effort.I believe in the presence of family value and care for one another. | 1. Be the best supportive and loving family member to all of my families and relatives. 2. Always be on the side of my friends, trusting them. 3. Have Danny's back with his problems. Cheer him up even when I wasn't very much interested. | Open-minded| I believe in the differences in ideas, interests, and conflicts. I acknowledge those differences and am unbiased and receptive. | 1. Be open to the sensitive questions from Danny3. Be receptive to what can be condescending questions and statements from Danny about my religion2.Open to different cultures, when first came to Canada. | Loving and welcoming| I believe in the loving and welcoming all of those who enters into my life. Once entered, I love and value them regardless of circumstances | 1. Welcoming Coral to Calgary and to my friends. 2. Making Sinae feel at ease at my place. | Appendices Best-Self Stories 1. From a work colleague: I have the ability to give a hand whenever any co-worker asked. For example, there was a time when Choa asked if I could help her with arranging all the inventories in the back room, I agreed to help with a smile.The back room was a mess and it was going to take a long time to arrange because the inventories were not in order of product names. Choa and I started get to work, by prioritizing the sections that we needed to organize. I set the sections in the best order so we could finish by the end of our shifts. Although we didn’t work together many times before, we managed to work together well, helping one another. I didn’t lose smile although there were lot of work to do. I helped her when she was handling heavy inventories. In the end , we managed to finish our jobs, and end up gotten closer than before. 2.From a work colleague: I was fast getting used to the new working place as well as being with new co-workers. When I got the job at the Swarovski, I was the only one who was new and all the others all so close to one another. But I got along with the co-workers, getting used to their system of how they do things in their own ways. Although Choa's way of working was bit different than the others, I soon adapt to her system, so I could help her better and let her work with me more effectively and faster. I was very civil and almost diplomat that she or others did not feel threatened or uncomfortable during my first couple of weeks.By the time my job was near the end, I was friends with everyone, including the manager. 3. From a friend: I am receptive and open-minded whenever Danny wanted someone to talk to. For example, there were times when he talked about religions. Although our religions were different, and th ere may have been times where Danny’s questions were perhaps inappropriate and offensive, I never judged him or get offended. I understood the differences in views of people, and I thought it is normal and possible for others to have such views or questions that might be condescending.I tried my best to help him understand my point of views with all the knowledge I know about my religion. And I listened to what he sees and perceives about religions and actually paying attention to what he is saying without stopping him or correct him. 4. From a friend: I was always nice to a friend, and be the best friend. For example, because Danny loves shopping, he used to ask me if I could join him time to time. If I wasn't too busy, I always accompanied him to the mall, helping him choose the clothes.There were times when I didn't want to go because I end up wasting my money but I still went most of the times because he needed that to be cheered up and I knew he needed a company. I was a lways supportive, even if I was tired and exhausted following him, and even recommended the trendy and fitting styles to him. He trusted me to tell him what was good or bad for him, and I did exactly that when necessary. I listened to his problems and gossips when we are together, when we were shopping, and I backed him up and cheered him when he felt down and discouraged about his relationships or looks. With the best advices thatI could give him, he could steam off some stress and worries for that week. And I was also happy because I could see he became happy. 5. From a friend: I am great at making people happy and comfortable. For example, I visited Korea with Sinae for the summer. And she was staying at my parents' place with me for the whole trip. She was little bit uncomfortable and apologetic that she might disturb any family moments. The whole atmosphere of the Korean neighborhood made her being unease. I made sure that she didn't feel uncomfortable by always being with her and invite her to the family outings.I constantly talked and joked with her when we were with my families so that she can join in the same conversation and be more active and feel welcomed. She later was fully relaxed and was herself. 6. From a family member: I am great being responsible. As a daughter, I did and still do my best to take care of family/daughter duties. For example, it is hard to live alone with both of my parents living in another country. But I always find the time to write them letters for celebrations, to call and email them, and always keep constant interactions with them.Because my parents do not know what’s going on with my life, I let them know, talking to them about almost everything, from small to big things. I feel responsible as their daughter to update them with my life, whether I have exams coming up or I have an interview. But I think it is also my responsibility to not make them worried. So I don’t tell them how stressed I am with my sch ool or having a boy crisis. 7. From a family member: I am great at adapting to new environment and new challenges. When we first immigrated to Calgary, all I know was the simple hi, how are you English.Everything was just so different, with people, language, and the culture. But when I started going to a junior high school, I never complained or cried. I never screamed at my mom, that I want to go back. I adapted well, studying English hard as well as other regular classes. I also got into the school band, because I wanted to play the flute. I was one of the good performers who knew how to play the flute, which helped me make friends lot better. If I didn't have power to adapt, I would've never fully got use to Calgary, made no friends, and cried every night. 8.From a friend: I am always being kind to her. From the moment I met Coral, I tried my best to be supportive and a friend to her because she was new to Calgary. Because she did not have any friends or didn’t know any pl aces to buy things or go eat, I showed her to good restaurants and good stores to buy school suppliers with good prices. If I had time, I sometimes went to the places she wanted to go with her so that she wouldn’t get lost. I introduced her to my friends with the same major as her or similar habits. I invited her when I hung out with my friends so she wouldn’t get lonely.Now, we are closer than anyone, trusting one another. Coral helps me with the problems I have, returning all kindness to me, which I am very grateful for. LP1, Part 6 Personal Integrative Analysis Analysis 1. What are the five ideas or insights from this course, central to the primary question? There are many ways to find out my transferable skills, and I actually have more transferable skills than I previously thought. The exercises taught me to never lose confidence within myself because they showed me different skills that I didn't realize before.Another insight that I learned is that there are many different ways to see things and each way can allow myself to express my transferable skills, capacities and/or values differently. Depends on how I value myself, I can have different skills on one thing. The more I can gain and improve many transferable skills, the more my individual genius to be able to overlap with the world of work. I believe that if I can increase my zone of skills and values, I will easily find the appropriate fit between myself and the world. I will know many skills, both professional and practical, to allow me to adapt to the outside world lot better and faster. . What are three insights that I have been able to integrate within this course? One of the insight that I was able to integrate within this course is that there are many things that I am and should be grateful for and I now know I should be expressing them. I learned that it is important for me to feel appreciated to things around me and within me; I shouldn't take things for granted. Feeling grate ful for even small things can change my mood and the way I feel and act. Another insight is that I should pause my life once in awhile and look at my life in terms of goals, achievement, and stages that I am in right now.Am I in the right path of being happy with my life? Where am I with my goals and achievement? I learned that although things around me, like a job and relationships with people, are important, taking care of myself and evaluating myself is also very important to me too. When I am working and trying to survive in the outside world, I will know better to stop and go through my life mission and goals. The knowledge I was able to grab from this course is that truly knowing who I am, what I want, and what I did and have is priceless.I always thought that I knew myself pretty well, better than anyone else, but this course taught me how and what to do in order to look within myself. I now know that I will try to go over these steps I have learned to update my info to mysel f time to time. 3. My individual genius when interacting with others? I think I am more aware of my individual genius when I'm interacting with others than before. Because I know more about my individual genius, I think I will be able to grab many opportunities to improve on them while interacting with other people.I know what and when I can exercise and best perform my transferable skills. 4. Two new interest or values? One of my new interest is the self-awareness. I think I entered this new level of not only understanding about myself, but of the ways and steps that I am to learn about myself. I never thought that knowing myself is valued this much by everyone in professional world as well as in personal life. I now know that it is in one of my best interest to continue with widen my self-awareness and self-understanding. It is good knowing myself, and it's beautiful being confident.After all the exercises, I now learn to be appreciative. Exercises I did in classes first forced me to find things that I feel grateful, and then after couple of them, I know the importance of being grateful. Things I have been ignoring are now the ones that am grateful for. These exercises opened my eyes. The fact that I feel grateful for small to big things, I feel like I am more positive. I didn't know that this exercise made to see more beautiful things than I did before. 5. When am I most confident? When am I least confident? I am most confident when I am using my top strengths, helping people.When I am in a position to help other, which is whenever, there is no need for me to waste time to see if I'm confident to help or now. If I can help, I help. If the help requires a special knowledge that I do not have, I either don't help or I take instructions. I am most confident when I look at myself. I know myself the best, and I can express myself to me the best. With the help of this course, I think I am better at it. When I'm at least confident, I'm standing in front of the cla ss, getting all the unwanted attention, and have to present.Although I may be most confident expressing myself to me, I am least confident when I am either expressing myself to the group of people or present. It makes my whole body shake and my heart beat fastens like there is no tomorrow even when I'm thinking about speaking out loud in a class full of people. I am also least confident when I need to be the sole leader. I think that even if I am qualified to be a leader, I can't come out and lead because I never had that many opportunities before. I think that when I am assigned to be a leader, that's when I'm scared for myself.