Understanding the Self

Learning to be a Better Person

Unit 12

Becoming a better person

○ Barely passing the subjects and graduating afterwards is not

necessarily the best option if one wants to have a successful career
in the future.
○ Aside from having a good learning environment, students should be
able to understand the value of what they are learning and why they
are learning it.

Tips to become a better person

1. Prepare before doing what you love

○ Research or read on the next topic for school
○ Eat and have proper rest
○ Make sure the you have the necessary tools ready

2. Use different Resources

○ Using the internet or the library allows us to discover the latest
learnings about the topic.

3. Be critical and make learning personal

○ Know what you are learning, why you are learning it, and how they
are important for your future.
○ Be critical of the information you are acquiring

4. Ask Help
○ Others can help us to surpass our limitations and ease the difficulty
brought about by the requirement of our curriculum.

5. Do other things
○ Engage in co-curricular activities to build relationships that will
translate as help in the future.
○ Playing sports can also help keep the body healthy
 Signs of Failing Mental Health

1. Depression
○ A persistent and extreme feeling of loneliness.

2. Anxiety
○ Irrational fear and worry towards something or a situation.

3. Sudden Mood and Behavior Change

○ Unusual mood and behavior

4. Poor Performance
○ Inability to maximize potentials.
 Understanding the Self

Setting Goals for a Success

Unit 13

Definition of Success

○ Define success on your own terms. - Anne Sweeny

○ Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction
in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are
capable - John Wooden

Bandura’s Self- Efficacy

○ Self-Efficacy is commonly defined as the belief in one’s capabilities

to achieve a goal or an outcome. It is the ability to influence events
that affect one’s life and control the way these events are
experienced (Bandura, 1994).
○ Efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency (Bandura,
2001).
- Human agency - the ability of people to use cognitive abilities
to control their lives.
○ Self- efficacy is not the expectation of our action’s outcomes.
○ Although self-efficacy has a powerful casual influence on people’s
actions, it is not the sole determinant.

Two types of Self-Efficacy

1. High Self-Efficacy
- more likely to challenge themselves
- high degree of effort
- recovers quickly from setbacks

2. Low Self-Efficacy
- belief that they cannot be successful
- less likely to extend effort
- low aspirations
Four Ways to Build Self-Efficacy

1. Mastery Experience
○ build resilience thru treating failure as a learning opportunity and
chance to reach our goal with a different approach.

2. Social Modeling
○ Observing those who practice high self efficacy in their lives and
who have reached their goals despite hardships.

3. Social Persuasion
○ Finding the right mentor; having other’s (role model) directly
influence one’s self-efficacy by providing opportunities to master
experience.

4. States of Physiology
○ Positive emotion can help build positive insight for high self-efficacy
to a person.

Carol Susan Dweck

○ born October 17, 1946

○ is an American psychologist.
○ She is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at
Stanford University.
○ known for her work on mindset.
○ proposed that people hold for nature, and the cause of intelligence
have several implications, specifically the way the person motivates
himself to learn and practice.
○ Carol Dweck studies human motivation. She spends her days diving
into why people succeed (or don’t) and what’s within our control to
foster success.

Dweck’s Mindset Theory

● Mindset
- explain the assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or
more people or groups of people.
- It represents the cognitive processes activated in response to a
given task.
 - Mindset is a self-perception or “self-theory” that people hold
about themselves. Believing that you are either intelligent or
unintelligent is a simple example of a mindset.

2 Types of Mindset

1. Fixed Mindset
○ an innate or in -born
personality of a person
○ basically “who you are”,
how God made you

2. Growth Mindset
○ believe that training and
an effort to learn can change
one’s qualities and traits.

Dr. Edwin Locke Goal Setting Theory

○ states that there is a relationship between how difficult and specific

a goal was and the people’s performance task.
○ He found that specific and difficult goals led to better task
performance than vague or easy goals.

Getting Smart

1. Specific
○ Simple, Sensible, & Significant

2. Measurable
○ Meaningful & Motivating

3. Achievable
○ Agreed & Attainable

4. Realistic
○ Reasonable. Realistic, Resourced, & Results-Based
 5. Time-Bound
○ Time-Based, Time Limited, Time/Cost Limited, Timely,
Time-Sensitive

Five Principles of Goals Setting

 Understanding the Self

Taking Charge of One’s Health

Unit 14

Definition

❊ Stress
○ Stress is person’s response to events that threaten them
○ Stress is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand
placed upon it
○ Stress is an individual’s physiological and/or psychological reaction
to the real and imagined demands of life
○ The way a person reacts physically and emotionally to change

❊ Stressor
○ can be in the form of natural disasters, frustrating day to day lived
experiences, and interpersonal relationships.

Sources of Stress

1. Natural Disasters
○ Unfortunate events that are caused by nature

2. Frustrating everyday life experiences

○ Daily experiences that are unwanted

3. Interpersonal Relationships
○ Social interaction of an individual

Stress Effects on the Body

○ Muscle Tension, Tension-type headache and migraine headache

○ Difficulty in breathing
○ Asthma
○ Increased heart rate
○ Stronger contraction of the heart muscle
○ Elevated blood pressure
○ Heart attack
○ Stroke
○ Inflammation of the respiratory system
 ○ Elevated epinephrine and cortisol hormones
○ Uncontrolled blood glucose level
○ Heartburn or acid reflux Ulcer
○ Severe stomach pain
○ Diarrhea
○ Constipation
○ Increased respiration rate - Dilated blood vessel in the arms and
legs
○ Affects testosterone production
○ Sperm production
○ Erectile dysfunction
○ Absent or irregular menstrual cycle
○ Difficult premenstrual symptoms

Psychological Responses To Stress

○ Hopelessness
○ Sadness
○ Anxiety
○ Depression

Stress and Filipinos: The social and Cultural dimensions of Stress

● Despite the jolly personality innate among Filipinos , they can be still be
stressed out
● In the cultural perspective stress can also impact both physical and
mental aspect of a person
● Filipinos experience stress and results to illnesses, physical and mental,
fleeting and serious and life-threatening
● According to Tan (2006) Physiological responses among Filipinos can
range from asthma to singaw (canker sores), to cardiovascular
ailments and even infectious diseases, since stress can affect an
individual’s immune system.
● Men and Women express emotion in different patterns.
- Women deal with stressful situations through tiis (endurance)
and kimkim (repression).
- Men are less expressive than women and prone to confront
“political economy of stress” (Tan, 2006)
Taking Care of the Self

❊ Self-Kindness
○ Being warm and understanding when she/he suffer, fail or feel
inadequate rather than self- critical
○ Recognizing imperfection and consider life difficulties as inevitable
○ Acknowledging problems and shortcomings without judgment
○ Tendency to be gentle when confronted with painful experience

❊ Common Humanity
○ Suffering and individual deficiency is part of human existence.

❊ Mindfulness
○ Nonjudgmental, receptive mindstate in which thoughts and feeling
are observed
○ Equilibrated stance in terms negative emotions, feelings are neither
suppressed or exaggerated
○ Inadequacies are ignored or distorted

Benefits Of Self-Compassion

● enhances motivation
● promotes health related behaviors
● benefits interpersonal relationships
● predicts happiness and optimism
● enhances wellbeing