Day 3 by Annalisse

Today’s evening program was a great learning experience for me. Earlier, I had been chosen to answer a Question of the Day, or a question that focused on my understanding of what I had learned. I thought hard about the question as I ate dinner and studied the notes I had taken before, planning out my answer in my head.

When it was finally time to present my answer to the group, I was definitely nervous. What if my mind totally blanked when I stood up in front of everyone? What if my answer was wrong?  However, as I started talking, I discovered I had a pretty good grasp of the concept and some of that fear went away. After I finished explaining my answer and answering the follow-up questions from other people, I felt more confident in my abilities. Answering the Question of the Day made me realize that I need to believe in myself more and that not letting fear control me helps me to achieve my goals.

The Johari window exercise was also enlightening. This exercise involved filling in adjectives about myself into four boxes: “open”, “blind”, “hidden”, and “unknown”. In the “open” box, I wrote words that I thought described both how I see myself and how I think others see me. In the “blind” box, people chose other adjectives to describe how they saw me. Next, in the “hidden” box I picked things about myself I thought others didn’t know; and then placed the remaining, unused adjectives in the”unknown” box. This exercise helped me to see the relationship I have with others and myself more clearly. The box with the largest amount of words was “unknown” - this tells me that I don’t have a very open relationship with others, and that I don’t truly understand how other people see me or who I really am.  I chose to describe myself using words such as “introvert” and “quiet” - but the group actually saw me as “confident” and “cheerful”. I realized that there is a disconnect between the way I think others perceive me and the way they really think about me. I also saw that I tried to hide other things that make me who I am from the rest of the world. This exercise opened my eyes to the fact that I need to get to know myself better, embrace the parts of myself that I try to hide, and communicate more openly with the people around me - because strong relationships are built on trust.