The next topic we were taught in LMS is Anger Management.

In the past, I always thought that I was very good at anger management as I have never gotten into fights or very serious quarrels with my peers until one incident that changed my thinking…I got into a fight with my friend.

Anger management means how you manage your anger in a correct and peaceful way. Anger is a negative emotion and it can lead to quarrels or worst, fights. I discovered that if we experience anger on a regular basis, we would have the risk of serious health problems such as hypertension, digestive problems, and other chronic illnesses. Our body will also show signs of anger like tightened muscles, tightened fist, heavy breathing and not able to think properly. So being happy is the best remedy for good health.

People normally express the anger when they are angry. Some people direct their anger at the wrong target and displace to their friends and families. This can cause unhappiness between your friends and families, and the problem still haven’t resolved. There are many ways to manage your anger. One of the effective ways is to use COW (Control Outburst Withdrawal). As for me, I would try to distract myself from that source of anger and control my emotions and behaviour. We should set aside from negative thinking as they can affect your mood and your response to the situation. When that happens, we normally jump to conclusions and interpret things negatively.

When it comes to teamwork, I am fortunate to be with my classmates and they are good teammates. We were able to communicate and discuss on our project effectively and complete our projects in time. Although, sometimes we have a little quarrel here and there, we manage our anger well and resolve the conflict.In short, after attending the topic on anger management, I find myself being more able to manage my negative emotions and it prevents me from having serious conflicts with my peers.

Self-awareness & Self-Esteem

At first, when I first attended Life Management Skills module, I thought it was a boring and dull module. From the phrase "Life Management Skills", I thought to myself how is it possible to manage one's life by studying about it? I personally don't think that my life needs to be managed or need to learn how to manage my own life, until I attended the first lesson of Life Management Skills…

The first lesson was on self-awareness and self-esteem. Before that, I don’t even know what is self-awareness or self-esteem. Self-awareness is about understanding who you are, your values and how you see the world. For years, I have never thought of understanding who I am, what I am here for. But from LMS I learnt more about self-awareness. It is essential to forming strong, enduring relationship but before I can form a good relationship with others, I need to understand more about myself. I’m amazed that how we can understand ourselves.

I find that self-awareness is important to me as I am quite a shy person. By understanding myself, I can present myself more appropriately and create the impression that I want others to view me. I find that by opening myself up to others, we can know each other and communicate better. Self-awareness really helps me a lot in my life as I’m less shy compared to the previous me.

As for self-esteem, it is about how you value your life and others and how to deal with negative emotions. It helps me to communicate and relate better to others and have more meaningful relationships with my friends rather than just understanding them on the surface. I learn how to be more independent and relies less on others. Through self-esteem, I learn how to recover from setbacks and dispose all the negative thinking.

Occasionally, I do blame myself for spending not enough time on tutorials and had to burn midnight oil to complete it. Sometimes when I compare myself to others I would have a bit inferior. In the past, I would just stop thinking about those negative thinking. But after learning more about self-esteem and self-awareness, I learn how to deal with those negative thinking. Now, I would reframe those negative thoughts that I had in my mind.

What will I become in 5 years time? I would have just completed my studies and army training. I would have become more fit, more responsible and respect those around me as I had undergone army training. The positive things that I would like people to remember me as happy, responsible person and a good friend. The steps I intend to take to reach my goals is to applied self-awareness and self-esteem to my life, having positive thinking, help others in times of need and value friendship with new and current friends.

In short, self-awareness and self-esteem will make me a better person, learn to balance my life and learn to enjoy life.