Add 1 page to Soul Portrait

This class, “Business Communications” is exactly what I needed at this time of my life. I have been living the life by not sharing my feelings with anyone and hoping that things will turn around. I have been living the life without any active planning and goals. Until now, I was not even sure of the purpose of my life. I learned many valuable lessons from this class in such a short time period, some of these lessons I wish I have learned earlier that would have saved me so much time overthinking why my ex-girlfriend left me, why I went through so much drama in my life. I wish that I had learned earlier the impact of saying thank you to someone and the impact of random act of kindness. Below are some activities I would like to present that I believe will make my life better: Comment by USER: I prefer to start the paper beginning like this. It’s my opinion. But please suggest your thoughts.

Soul Portrait

In the first class, we were required to present our soul portrait envelops. In this activity, I talked about my deepest fear, learning goals and the things that hold me back.

My deepest fear is indubitably loneliness. Since the 2007 incident, I have maintained a single life breeding an environment of hefty solitude. My learning goal is to acquire an outstanding capacity in communication skills. The advantages accruing from proper communication skills are endless ranging from successful business networking to team building. Things that hold me back include my overly busy career life as well as the emotional discomforts I live with every single day. Be that as it may, I do not extend my problems into my professional life.

Major lessons that I have learned from this exercise are to face my own shortcomings, accept the reality, and move on. I am planning to have list of all my goals and review them regularly for improvements and where I failed in reaching my goals. Comment by USER: I added this paragraph

The River of Life

Doing the river of life’s activity, was a chance for me to take a moment and appreciate my journey. Telling my story during the presentation allowed me to experience my adventure in a new way by receiving feedback and inspiration from the listeners. A complement came from the audience acknowledging the success in my career as software engineer making me feel exemplary and proud.

As is the instinct flowing among most humans, I have an issue sharing my problems with other people given the possibility of negative judgment and inadequate assistance in line with the problem. As such, I do not openly share my predicaments. Apparently, it feels better sharing a problem with someone having the same or a similar problem as it offers the comfort of confronting the issue together. Doing the river of life activity, I found out it is impossible for me to talk about my life without mentioning my struggles and setbacks. So, I talked about my journey, struggles, ups and downs, and accomplishments. This activity taught me a beautiful lesson and a reality that life is like a river which keeps flowing. And I need to keep moving with a happy and positive attitude despite of many hurdles I have faced in life. At the end of the activity, I did not regret that I opened myself to others and talked about my thoughts, fears, and hopes. Comment by USER: Added this part. Please correct this If I am adding anything wrong. Comment by USER: Added additional words

The Last Lecture Video.

The most intriguing thing as witnessed in the video is the resilience and confidence portrayed by Randy in his pursuit towards achieving his childhood dreams. Despite battling cancer, he still was high spirited to fulfill his dreams. Randy claims that good parenting, as well as time allocation, were essential aspects towards the realization of his intellectual and emotional growth. As such, proper parenting provides stable emotions requisite for proper concentration towards the achievement of children’s goals. Another take away is that difficulties are not supposed to weigh us down but to energize us towards the materialization of our dreams.

I was very shy to ask anyone for any guidance and assistance because I am usually thinking that I will be judged. Randy’s video helped me with this issue of mine when during his lecture he said we all need each other, and we need help from anyone we can get help from like our parents, mentors, teachers, and friends. I am focusing on implementing this lesson to no longer be the shy person and to start asking for help and guidance from others. I am hoping they will help me. Comment by USER: I added this paragraph

I really liked his mindset on accomplishing goals

Active Listening Skill

Active listening is a message that the listener cares about others’ needs and emotions. As active listening is an act of care, people understand when you listen to them, they open to you, talk comfortably about their problems or needs. This class trained me to listen without interruption with an aim to understand the opinions raised by other students and other individuals that I interact with. Complementarily, the ability to actively listen has since improved my emotional intelligence.

I am planning to continue applying this amazing skill throughout my life. I have already applied it at my work while talking to other employees that are not part of my immediate team. I used to not focus on what they have to say before, but now that I am seriously focused on what they are saying and what expectations they may have from me is forcing me to be focused on active listening. Honestly, I am learning more about people. It’s a strange feeling, but I am liking it. Comment by USER: I added this paragraph

Leadership

Throughout the discussion about leadership and good leaders’ characteristics in the class, I found out that good and successful leaders have many character features in common. Successful leaders are rational, intellectually enabled and reasonable. Also, when dealing with other people and even their subjects, good leaders are motivating, cognitive, affectionate and compassionate. It is against this background that good leaders impact change and provide impeccable direction. As I worked with several leaders for roughly over seven years, I developed a capacity to appreciate good leadership as guaranteed by the traits that they possessed. Given such guidance and continued practice, I have learned to consolidate these leadership traits towards becoming a better leader.

On the other hand, we have self-centered leaders who are far more concerned about their success than that of the organization. As such, they take the ideas generated by the team and engulf all the credit without regard to the efforts put in by the team. Self-centered leaders lack compassion and emotional intelligence, as they are so focused on themselves, they do not understand the feelings and perspectives of other people; therefore, they cannot communicate with their employees, they are not flexible or collaborative, and they consider compassion as a weakness.

Compassionate leaders, in contrast, enhance their employees as they value and appreciate them. Strengthening the employees` engagement yields better outcomes and positively affects the work environment and improves the employees’ productivity. Compassionate leaders pass their knowledge to their employees, engage them in making decisions, trust them, and support them.

For example, I consider my manager an excellent example of a compassionate and inspiring leader. Certainly, it is through his teachings that I got to learn how to build relationships with my coworkers and inspired me to follow his leadership model. My manager is flexible as he can adapt to different environments. I had a problem of sharing my mistakes with my coworkers. However, with my manager’s help, I was able to talk about my inaccuracies and discuss even discuss them to avoid recurrence making my relationship with my colleagues sturdier.

I learned in this class that a mindful leader would be more productive, have a positive attitude with employees, be more organized and compassionate, be able to influence others, be understanding, motivating and self-aware, and ultimately be able to create a positive work environment. Also, a leader with a growth mindset will embrace challenges instead of avoiding it, learn from criticism, get inspired by others, improve his and or her skills instead of limiting his or her abilities, creatively solve work and self-problems, and will be compassionate with his/her employees.

Gratitude Letter Comment by USER: I added this section

The letter of gratitude assignment opened my eyes towards understanding how important it is for someone to receive a thank you as well as how important it is for me to say it by realizing the effort and sincerity that person and put into making something easy and good for me. This activity had reminded me of many individuals made impact in my life and has contributed to my success. In order for me to say thank you to them I have to realize and appreciate their contribution.

I am planning to continue this amazing practice which we have forgotten and take things for granted. It’s meaningful practice in which I am making sure that my relationship improves with others or at least remains where it is at currently as having good social relationship are as important to share joys as they are during difficult times.

Random Act of Kindness

This activity made us help others which I believe that was for to help ourselves because during this random act of kindness activities I realized how with little time and mostly with no money we can make big impact in someone’s life Comment by USER: Keep adding like my class learning and what I apply in my life

My goal is to continue the act of doing good in the best way I can at that time and it doesn’t matter where I life in future I am hoping to find people I can help in any way I can

Count Your Blessings

During this activity I realizes how many things I am blessed with and how many good people I am blessed with these gifts. Since I have these I plan to give gratitude to aspects of my life that can be taken for granted. There’s places in the world where the citizens do not have running water or good food. Simple exceptions to life such as a grocery store doesn’t exist in some areas of the world. I am planning to continue this activity by every accomplish to give back to my town in my way in some way.

Giving MYSELF an “A”

When I was writing a letter to myself I was forced to think why am I giving myself an “A” which made me work towards having a list of goals and to have plan to reach these goals … Comment by USER: Keep adding like my class learning and what I apply in my life

I am making sure that I continue to stay focused on my chosen path to success. I have been a had mentioned about working full time as a software engineer. Afterwards, furthered my education and am looking to complete MBA this Spring. I gave myself an A because I knew the sacrifice it takes to get here and I knew the amount of effort it took.

Conclusion Comment by USER: Do we need conclusion for this type of paper? If yes, please update this section.