My Reflection Shows Who I Am Inside

A- Over the weekend I sat down to complete my blog assignment with the mind set of getting it done. I read the assignment, sat in front of the computer for another couple minutes, and then went downstairs to watch a movie. I decided to rekindle some of my childhood memories by watching the Disney movie Mulan. Half an hour through, a song started playing called "Reflection" by Christina Aguilera. It was during this sequence that the main character Mulan was starting to figure out who she really was as a person. And it was at this time the true value of self knowledge. Mulan did not let tradition or her family dictate the person that she was, but she took her own fate into her hands and decided to be the person that she wanted to be.

In order to gain self-knowledge, a person has to make decisions for his/herself and use each experience has a learning tool to figure out his/her strengths and weaknesses. A person has to be willing to admit that they are not perfect and have weaknesses, but at the same time, they need to be proud of their strengths and admit to them as well. That is the value of self-knowledge - the ability to be honest about who you really are and what you can do.


B- One of my greatest weaknesses as a person is my inability to be patient. I am the type of person who has to do everything quickly, but efficiently. I am the person that gets frustrated when someone does not understand something that I perceive to be simple or common sense. If someone manages to get in my way or keeps me from accomplishing my tasks, I get irritated. However, I cannot go through life expecting not to face any obstacles or assuming that every person has the same way of accomplishing tasks as I do. That would be unrealistic. So, in order compensate for reality, I remind myself during these situations that life does go on even when things are not perfect. I force myself to be calm when explaining for the third time how to do a math problem even though I finished the homework a couple hours ago. Every instance in which I find that my impatience is getting the best of me I make myself take a deep breath, calm down, and continue on. I will most likely always have this weakness, but to what extent it controls my life is up to me and the way I decide to live my life.


C- I pride myself in my ability to get along with most everyone - mainly because I refrain from passing judgments too fast. I have friends of all races, social/economic classes, and even of various ages. I do not let social barriers keep me from talking to others even when those people are not the "best" role model or even the "best" human being because who has the right to judge someone else's role in life? One of my main beliefs is that everyone has something to offer - something that they are able to teach others. I have met people that never completed high school and have lived in a trailer park their entire lives yet they are the happiest and sometimes smartest people. However, if I were to judge them by sight or first impression, I would have said they were a low-class citizen that did not seem to care. It is not my place to pass judgements on others, especially when I would not want someone else's first impression of me used to decide what kind of person I am. I have found that by refraining from judging too quickly has caused me to learn a lot about life and has opened my eyes to a whole other part of life that I never would have seen before because I have let so many different people from all walks of life into mine.


D- When I first found out the assignment was to write about my greatest strength and weakness, I thought it was going to be easy. However, when I started to actually think about my abilities, I could not come up with any. So, I decided to ask family members and a few friends what they thought. The answers they gave seemed helpful but I did not think that they were the strongest part of my character. Not only that, all the answers were different. People took a little longer when answering the question about my greatest weakness. Some tried to turn it into a backhanded compliment by saying that I was too kind. Once again, all the answers were different. Then I realized that I was not going to find my answer from other people, but I had to come up with them myself.

Actually writing about my strengths and weaknesses was not too hard to do. The hardest part was figuring out what those aspects were going to be. It was difficult because I do not like to come across as an arrogant person. However, while writing about my strength, I realized that there is a difference between being arrogant and being honest with yourself. Arrogance is defined as showing excessive pride, however, by just admitting that I am good at not passing judgments is not showing excessive pride. Also, when writing about my greatest weakness I had to make sure that I showed some confidence in myself and did not declare everything to be my greatest weakness - after all, I have to be good at something!

This blog assignment was definitely the most interesting one because It seemed like a very easy thing to write about, yet turned out to be a great learning experience and harder than I thought originally. This is something that I believe everyone should have to do at some point in there life because it teaches you so much about yourself and forces you to come to terms with who you really are.