Descriptive Reflection: Strengths and Challenges in Communicating (EDIT2)

 What is communication? To me, words are merely a medium for us to relate meanings which leads to communication. Instead of using a river as a metaphor, I would use a magnet to describe communication. For interpersonal communication, the image of two magnets with like poles that repel symbolises the idea that both parties in a communication situation cannot be speaking at the same time. To build relations, only one party should be speaking while the rest are listening. The constant magnetic field surrounding the magnet would be the environment and the noise, which symbolise intra-communication.

Personally, I feel that one of my strengths in communicating is that I am very open-minded as I can talk to anyone about anything under the sun. I love to interact with people especially strangers as I find joy in making new friends. By doing so I will be able to start a new journey with them and also know myself better. An analogy would be a girl going down to the dance floor and survey how much attention she could get to know her self-worth or market value. I love having heart to heart talks with anyone under the sun as it acts like a reflection process to me. Another strength in communication would be being a good listener. Stories make me ponder and like a sponge, I absorb every bit of information from the speakers. Through these stories, I am able to learn and gain vicarious  experiences, without having to physically go through them myself. Yet I would know the outcome and even the precautions to take when I encounter such events.

However, my strength can be posed as challenges too. Being equipped and exposed to these experiences, sometimes I feel that I am actually “entertaining” my friends when they share their common stories with me. This is because right after I know what they are implying or suggesting I already relate to their stories and already know how to advise, console or react to their actions. This way even before they could finish their stories, I would have made some assumptions which is rude. Thus, the challenge is I would have to constantly remind myself not to do make assumptions before the speaker finishes his story. Another challenge is that I feel after years of experiences in the sales and marketing industry, being overly convincing and having a magnitude of influence, I tend to manipulate others, sometimes even without me knowing. Thus I have to constantly remind myself to put myself in the shoes of others. However most of the time I face a dilemma: what if my decision and the results are for my audience’s own well being but he could not see the it? Should I still enforce it or let him regret only when he finally realised? For me, I am the type of person that I would rather you hate me now, than to go against my morals and let you be. An example would be during a gym session, I confronted someone to correct her form as she was doing her squats wrongly. Maybe to her, I should not have done that as it does not concern me or thinks I am flirting with her. But I would rather she hate me for intervening and misunderstanding me than to allow her to be inflicted with a lifetime injury. Sometimes though such incidents I would find out that it is me who has the wrong form, thus I was able to correct and improve myself.

Today, during the lesson, when discussing the topic on “meaning are words”, I thought of the example of person 'B' scolding person 'A', person 'A' should not react by scolding him, but understand that he is angry and at that point of time, words are not the real meaning whereas the reason behind his actions are. It struck me that being a hot-tempered person myself, I always fail to react appropriately. Thus, one of the objectives I would like to achieve towards the end of this module would be understanding and decoding others’ messages in as many perspectives as I can in the shortest amount of time, before my body or rage takes over my mind. All this while, I thought it was because of anger management but maybe it is because the message conveyed is unclear which leads to misunderstandings. Another objective would be to broaden my perspective and learn with an open heart. Thus I hope to be able to contribute as much as I could in class, to be able to induce thinking so that my classmates would be able to learn as much as I learnt from them. Lastly, I would like to end this post with this quote below, which I find very meaningful. Communication is hard to come by these days as we are living in a world where technology is very advanced. Wherever we go, we will be seeing everyone on their cell phones, living as a ‘phubber’, playing games or scrolling through social media. The opportunity to sit down with your love ones and focus on what they have to say requires so much effort. Most of the time, it is only possible after a certain degree of argument or reprimanding by their love ones. Nevertheless, to have an effective communication I feel that mutual respect plays a huge factor, wanting and having to communicate means world apart. Without the mutual respect, the audience would not be willing to listen, and the speaker would not keen to share as much. Communication that inspires, encourages people are always the best to me as I believe everyone at any point of time would need some form of motivation and seek help or escape the reality.