What do you get when you cross a one dimensional personality, with crippling disappointment in everything I do? ME! Yippee

Anyways, all self slander aside, I’ve been trying to improve the person I am, because if I stay as the person I am, who is boring, annoying, and generally and eyesore, I won’t get anywhere in life. I won’t get a job, and I won’t get anywhere socially. 

But then came this project, about finding and becoming your ideal person, which is something we worked in at the start of the year (Which was unsuccessful), but this project made much more sense, as it wasn’t forcing us to use programs that didn’t work, and actually inspired us instead of trying to make us emulate someone else. (Can you tell that I’m still very bitter about that failure of a project). 

In this project, we interviewed people, read novels, and watched some Ted talks.

I’ll start with the books, I read “Persepolis”, by Marjane Satrapi, as well as “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah. These were two very different books, but some of the messages were the same, such as that you can’t see the view on the summit from base camp, and that you should forgive, but not forget. I really enjoyed both books, which had some humorous parts, but also some very serious parts. The contrast between these made both of them intriguing reads about the struggles people faced and how they persevered through them. Additionally, I felt that the books also helped me realize that I shouldn’t take stuff for granted. All in all, very interesting, I would recommend them to anyone interested in reading a good book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9516.Persepolis

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29780253-born-a-crime?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_12

For my interview, I interviewed my cousin, who also happens to be a senior advisor to the minister of national defence (Crazy, right?), which she describes as being like being a babysitter. I had also listened to part of an audiobook version of “How to know a person” by David Brooks. The books was very interesting, and helped me come up with some great questions for my interview, such as “What crossroads are you at in your life”, and helped me understand how to ask questions without prying. Very good book. The interview was informal, but informative, and I got some very useful answers to questions, as well as some good advice for my future. These tidbits of advice included “Know what you value”, “Put yourself out there if you want to succeed” and “Be open to new ideas”. All of these, plus more was what I took out of the interview.

Throughout the whole project, we did daily gratitude activities, as well as some small activities, like a “Speed Dating” exercise (Not actually speed dating, just a name), where we would talk to someone for two or three minutes about a topic. I had a very enlightening conversation with Jackson about what annoys us, and we both agreed that people not being organized is something that really make both of us mad. Another thing we did was a “Stick Person” where we looked at who we are. This took me a few tries, because I had to think of ways to talk about myself without being too negative. (In case you couldn’t tell, I am pretty negative most of the time) The third time however, I got it just right, and had a good balance of my negative, neutral, and positive traits. Simply lovely.

Finally, we watched several videos from inspirational people, such as Sam Berns, and Michelle Obama. Both of these videos told very different stories that led to very similar places. “Don’t focus on what is out of your control”, and “If you can come back from setbacks, that’s better than never having them at all” were some of the important points I found .

 

I’ve simplified my learning into five points:

  • Stay confident in yourself when things get tough.
  • Knowing fully what you value is amazing for getting you places.
  • When things get tough, quitting only makes your problems worse.
  • Don’t forget where you are and where you came from.
  • Don’t waste time with regrets

I think the easy answer to the driving question would be “ We can use our blogging style to represent ourselves”, but if you read the whole post, I think you’ll come to a more complete answer.

Anyways, thanks for reading. 🙂