Background
In the quest to better one’s self and accomplish goals, many people improve their personal development abilities and communication skills over time. They achieve this through education, mentorship, experiences, and self-help. These aspects are crucial in enabling people to design strategic planning for their career and personal advancement. This paper, therefore, proposes of presenting two blog posts which focus on self-identity and dynamism as the key fundamentals to personal development and communication skills.
Post 1: Self-identity is the key to personal development and communication skills
Human history and development is a major topic that has been at the forefront of most discussions across the globe for many years. In these discussions, the aspect of development has been anchored on various grounds, such as early childhood mentorships, personal experiences, and the future ambitions of individuals. These phenomena are crucial in explaining and reflecting on some of the important aspects of human life, including self-identity (Module 2, 2022). I would like to demonstrate from my own experience how important self-development is in a large area of interpersonal relations.
In my personal reflection, I look back to my early childhood as a poor child living in a modest family with good parents. Their guidance has shaped my attributes and interaction with others. Living away from home since my late childhood has enabled me to diversify my interaction skills with people from different cultures and social backgrounds. These skills and ambitions have led me to be a role model and a good-looking figure that my daughter embraces. Through my experiences with my family condition and the health status of my mother and child, I decided to take a bold step as a care provider in residential home care. This has modeled me to withstand my concrete experiences through the various stages of life. As a health care provider, I realized how important it is to get rid of fear when I talked to one of the patients. She drew attention to the fact that I am nervous when communicating with other patients and she told me that it is important to overcome my fears, to become more confident since this is self-development.
When I related these experiences to the teachings of this class, I discovered a very significant element of personal development, self-identity. Through the definition and the explanation of self-identity in class, I discovered a lot about myself. For instance, I learned that for one to share ideas and have good interaction with others, they must overcome their fears. People cannot develop and advance while they are afraid (Tsekov and Ivanova, 2018). My experience concerning difficult experiences in childhood consists of the example of my friends. When we were kids, one of my friends shared all his thoughts and ideas that were ridiculed. Subsequently, the child developed a fear of communication and expressing opinions. Over time, undoubtedly, he overcame his fear, raised his self-esteem, and learned to manage his emotions. Naturally, it is imperative to understand in which cases the manifestation of certain emotions will be appropriate. According to Tsekov and Ivanova (2018), excessive display of strong feelings in the work environment can lead to poor communication and conflict. This means that people need to learn throughout their lives to use their emotions to control their relevance and timeliness. To eradicate this fear in the future, it is necessary to communicate more often with different people, try to delve into their problems, share own thoughts.
Post 2: The importance of empathy in the development of interpersonal communication and self-improvement
The ability to understand what another person feels and to react correctly to their emotions is necessary both in personal relationships and at work. A distinctive feature of empathy is that this property concerns a wide range of emotions – regardless of their positive or negative connotation (Hall and Schwartz, 2019). That is one of the essential skills that people can possess is the skill of empathy. Empathy is a conscious empathy with the emotional state of other people, the ability to recognize what they feel and express compassion. This skill is necessary when building interpersonal relationships, for example, to find a common language, agree and develop a strategy that will satisfy both sides. Empathy needs to be developed, and it will take time, as it includes not only the ability to recognize the emotions of another person but also empathic listening, the ability to calm a person, to give them on an emotional level precisely what they need.
I realized how vital empathy, and everything related to it are in my work. I worked with people and listened to them listlessly, immersed in my thoughts. Nevertheless, I realized that the ability to listen empathically is essential, especially for those with whom communication takes place. Once working with one of the patients, I was determined to listen to him, understand his problems and experiences, and I also tried to help him distract from the issue and gave recommendations. I began to listen to this patient more, we talked heart-to-heart more often, and his well-being improved. I realized how important it is to have empathy and be able to listen in interpersonal communication.
It is necessary to work on the skill of empathy to develop it and improve oneself. It is required to allow other people to speak out, not to finish phrases for them, and not to interfere with their statements (Decety, 2020). In addition, it is imperative to listen and focus on a person’s emotions. Listening with empathy involves interpreting the thoughts and feelings of others. One of the essential elements for developing empathy is the ability to put yourself in the place of other people. This skill helps not only to understand people better but also to learn to look at the problem from different angles (Ornaghi et al., 2020). It is also needed to understand and define own feelings because without this, it will be challenging to understand precisely what the other person feels.
In the future, I plan to continue developing my ability to empathize, as I have realized from my own experience how important and effective this is. Besides the fact that this communication skill helps in work, it is also important in everyday life. I can help my daughter and support her, and she will be able to understand that in any situation, I am with her and will be able to help her. I want to convey the importance of this skill to my daughter so that she also has the opportunity to become a likable person, improve her ability to communicate, and improve herself. Empathy helps increase the productivity of activities and the development of competence in communication and ensures the creation of more profound and personal relationships.
Reference list
‘Module 2: Developing a student and group identity’ (2022) [PowerPoint presentation].
‘Module 2: Introduction to effective practice in Health and Social care’ (2022) [PowerPoint presentation].
Decety, J., 2020. Empathy in medicine: What it is, and how much we really need it. The American Journal of Medicine (Vol. 133, pp. 561-566).
Hall, J., and Schwartz, R., 2019. Empathy present and future. The Journal of Social Psychology (Vol. 159, pp. 225-243).
Ornaghi, V., Conte, E., and Grazzani, I., 2020. Empathy in toddlers: The role of emotion regulation, language ability, and maternal emotion socialization style. Frontiers in Psychology (Vol. 11, pp. 1-11).
Tsekov, I. and Ivanova, M., 2018. Principles of effective communication.