PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT/PANSARILING KAUNLARAN

Aspects of Personal Development

I. COPING WITH STRESS IN MIDDLE AND LATE ADOLESCENCE
A. STRESS MANAGEMENT
Stress: emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension. (Webster definition)
 A practical way of defining stress is feeling one gets from prolonged, pent-up emotions. If the emotions you
experience are pleasant and desirable—joy, elation, ecstasy, delight—you usually feel free to let them show.
They are not suppressed.
 Therefore; positive emotions do not usually cause. Negative emotions, on the other hand, are more often
held inside. They are hidden. You suffer quietly and experience stress.
 Do not confuse positive situations with positive emotions. A wedding, for example, is a positive situation that
often brings about the negative emotions of anxiety and tension. So stress can exist in great situations.
i. Causes and Effects of Stress
Here are some words that describe the emotions associated (as cause and effect) with stress.
 anxiety  Tension
 pressure  Anger
 Misery  Panic
 Strain  Dejection
 Desperation
Prolonged stress can be devastating; burnout, breakdown, and depression are some of potential results of
long-term, unmanaged stress. By wearing a mask, you may expect to hide stress caused by problems in your
personal life and not let them influence your performance on the job. That will probably not work. The more
you try to hold your emotions in, the greater the pressure build-up will be.
ii. Everyday frustrations cause stress build-up
 From the time you wake up until you go to sleep, you may be confronted with a succession of
stressful situations. Managing to get yourself (and possibly a spouse and children) out of bed and
ready to face the day can be a challenge to your patience and ingenuity.
 Driving to school or work can be harrowing-especially if you’re running late.
 You may face conflicts in school or at work, such as coping with unrealistic deadlines, equipment
failures, or unexpected bad weather. If part of your job is selling, you may experience feelings of
rejection when most of your customers say “no”.
 A series of stressful and frustrating experiences thought the day can cause you to lie awake at night in
an emotional turmoil—unable to get needed rest.
 You face the next day with less emotional and physical stamina. After another stressful day and
another night without rest, you may have even less emotional strength and stability. Therefore, stress
build up, if not resolved, continues day after day.
iii. Problems in our personal life can be devastating
 Surviving the normal, everyday stress described above can be difficult. But far more serious and
painful circumstances can create long-term stress. More serious circumstances may include
separation from loved ones, personal illness, or illness of a loved one, death of someone you care
about, or conflict with a spouse or close friend. Other major causes of stress are problems with drug
and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, care of children and elderly relatives, chronic mental illness,
injury, physical handicaps, even moving new home, if you lived the same place for more than 10
years. The list goes on and on.
 Managing your personal finances can be another stressful experience. This can be a problem no
matter what your income level, but it is especially difficult if you must support a family and do not
earn enough to live comfortably. Unpaid bills, unwise of use credit, and budget limitations can make
life difficult.
iv. A common cause of stress is dealing with life’s frustrations
 This is especially true when a person must cope with too many transitions all at once.
For example, Ellen has just completed a program in fashion merchandising. She is eager to get started on her
new job. Her mother is ill and requires care. Her father died a few months ago. Ellen’s new job requires that
she relocate to a town 100 miles from home. The move, a new career, and a change in family relationships
may cause excessive stress for her. Too many changes have arrived at the same time.
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B. STRESS RESPONSE
 Your stress response is the collections of physiological changes that occur when face a perceived threat—
when you face situations where you feel the demands outweigh your resources to successfully cope.
These situations are known as stressors.
 When your stress response is triggered, a series of changes occur within your body. They include:
a. Redirection of blood away from extremities and instead to major organs
b. The release of cortisol and other hormones, which bring other short-and long-term changes.
c. The stress response is intended to give you a burst of energy so you’re able to fight off attackers or run
away from them effectively.

C. KEEP STRESS UNDER CONTROL

1. Understand the causes of stress
- Understanding why you are under stress is important.
2. Analyze your stress Factors and write Them Down
-For example, you may write down, “I feel tired most of the time. My lower back seems to ache all
through the day and night. I miss deadlines and run behind schedule.”
Analyze stress response and consequences, and consider each item, and ask why. “Why am i
feeling tired? Why does my back ache? Why do i run behind schedule?
Carefully, consider each answer, because the answers will reveal stressors, such as deadlines,
anxieties, trying to do so much, managing time or money poorly, or poor health habits.
3. Deal with the stressors
-develop techniques to deal with the causes of stress.
-the longer you avoid dealing with the stress factors, the more the stress will build up.
Example: If tension comes because you have put off an unfinished task, restructure your priorities so
you can get the task that you have been avoiding out of the way and off your mind.
4. Learn to Work under Pressure or Unusual Conditions
-when the pressure mounts, you can relieve it.
-Relaxation is key—but most people must train themselves to relax when the pressure is on.
Some Tips to relax when under pressure are the following:
a. Stop for a moment (especially when you feel your muscles tightening up) and take a few deep
breaths.
b. Do relaxing exercise. Swing your hands at your sides and stretch.
c. Find time to do the things you enjoy.
d. Leave your study area for a while to take a brisk walk.
e. Find a quiet place to read a magazine or novel during break or at lunch.
f. If possible, look at some peaceful images such as forest, beaches, etc.
g. Look up
h. Keep something humorous on hand, such as book of jokes.
II. The power of Mind
Big question: How do we develop the powers of the Mind?
A. LATERAL THINKING PUZZLE
1. “You are driving down the road in your car on a wild, stormy night, when you pass by a bus stop and you see three
people waiting for the bus:
a. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die
b. An old friend who once saved your life
c. The perfect partner you have been dreaming about Knowing that there can be only one passenger in your car,
whom would you choose?”
Hint: You can make everyone happy. Your car can only contain one passenger, so whom should it be?
Best Answer: I would give the old lady and friend the car and i would stay there with my perfect partner.
Solution: The old lady. After helping the old lady into the car, you can give your keys to your friend, and wait with your
perfect partner for the bus

2. “Acting on an anonymous phone call, the police raid a house to arrest a suspected murderer. They don’t know what
he looks like but they know his name is John and that he is inside the house. The police bust in on a carpenter, a lorry
driver, a mechanic and a fireman all playing poker. Without hesitation or communication of any kind, they
immediately arrest the fireman. How do they know they’ve got their man?”
Best answer: The fireman had a name tag that said John on it
Hint: The police only know two things, that the criminal's name is John and that he is in a particular house.
Solution: The fireman is the only man in the room. The rest of the poker players are women
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3. “A man lives in the penthouse of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and
leaves the building. Upon his return, however, he can only travel halfway up in the lift and has to walk the rest of the
way –unless it’s raining. What is the explanation for this?”
Hint: He is very proud, so refuses to ever ask for help.
Solution: The man is a dwarf. He can't reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him.
He can also push them with his umbrella.

4. “A man and his son are in a car crash. The father is killed and the child is taken to hospital gravely injured. When he
gets there, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate on this boy-for he is my son!!! How can possibly be?”
Hint: This has nothing to do with adoption or time travel
Solution: The surgeon cannot operate on her own son; she is his mother.

Learning
• What is exactly is learning?
• Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior resulting from experiences.
• Learning is very important because it practically shapes how you live your life-how you see the
world, how you deal with others, and how handle situations and challenges.
The Human Brain
• Is a sponge-like structure which is pink-gray in color.
• The brain is a truly marvelous organ, working 24 hours a day doing a very amazing job at enabling us
to solve problems, learn skills, and most basically—keeping us physically alive!
• The brain weighs about 3lbs, and most of its weight comes from the cerebral cortex, the part of the
brain which is in charge of most of our thinking functions.
Cerebral Cortex
• Divided into cerebral hemispheres, known as the Left Hemisphere and the Right Hemisphere.
• They are connected by a bundle of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum.
• Both hemispheres can interchange roles, and in fact most tasks engage in both cerebral cortex.
• In the process of learning, whether it is acquiring new information, learning a skill, or adopting a new
attitude or changing an old principle, both hemispheres play a crucial role.
Weiten (2011)- his review of compilations of research about hemisphere specialization,
• the left hemisphere usually is better on tasks involving verbal processing, such as language, speech,
reading, and writing,
• The right hemisphere exhibits superiority on many tasks involving nonverbal processing, such as
most spatial, musical, and visual recognition tasks.
• It makes sense that both our cerebral hemispheres always work together when we perform our daily
tasks.
The Left Brain-Right Brain Theory
• The left Brain-Right Brain theory endorses that each side of the brain controls different types of
learning,
• The theory suggests that Left-Brain dominant people perform better at tasks involving language,
logic, critical, thinking, dealing with numbers and reasoning.
• Right brain dominant people on the other are said to be comparably better at recognizing faces,
expressing emotions, tasks related to music, color, images, are more creative, and are more
intuitive.
Mind Maps: An aid to Effective Learning
• Mind maps, invented by Tony Buzan, are type of diagram used to visually display information and
organize relationships between concepts.
• By analogy, the central idea of your map is the trunk of the tree and all other concepts or ideas
related to the central idea are the branches; all ideas associated with those concepts in the branches
are called twigs arising from the branches.