Chapter 3 Family Affairs (Joel)

 

Chapter 3 - Chicken Soup is Tasty! XD LOLROLFMAO By Ray

There are times when family affairs disappoint you. On page 79 ‘Outside the Box’, there are four suggestions on how to handle disappointment. What do you think of each suggestion? If you do not have issues that are family related (include the wider family, adoptive family, guardian), consider other disappointments in your life with other people who are supposedly close to you.

1. Take it easy on yourself, especially if you are feeling down. Do something that makes you feel good about yourself.

If we take things easy and slow and steady in life, we can achieve what we can achieve faster than rushing it through. When we are sad, rushing through everything you do makes the person more stressful and worried. However, if one goes slowly, not only it relieves the stress, but also makes the person feel better and gets the job done quicker too. Most importantly, we have to relax ourselves. Everybody needs to relax, so it is fine for one to have a vacation, play some games etc once in a while to relieve stress. Also, we can obviously do something that that make us feel happy, but of course not by doing bad things. This will make one forget the hardships one suffered. 

2. No matter what the situation, try and find some sort of positive way to look at it.

I feel this statement is not entirely true. When one gets into a bad situation like being bullied or lost or scolded or etc thinking positive only help you relieve stress FOR A WHILE ONLY. I only makes the bad situation forgot as one has been teleported to Lala Land. BUT, on Earth, that person is, let's say, bullied and called names. They will keep going on and on and on and on and on but you still do not do anything but only zip to a land of happiness. One day, the stress would have build up too much such that  even dreaming of Minecraft would not help anymore. So the person would be emo and commit suicide. Alternatively one can instead seek help from an adult like a teacher, guardian, parent, councellor etc to ease the sadness and gain back the happiness and positivity in life. 

3. Know that everyone goes through disappointment, and the feelings that go along with it will not last forever.

Disappointment is a very common thing for Homo Sapiens and if I did not exist in one, you can call him an alien. If it does not exist in the universe, the Earth would have reached its Armageddon long long time ago. Also, we hardly experience it such that when we experience it, we say that we experience more disappointment than happiness but we are experiencing joy right now as you reading this blog post. Moreover, it does not last for like more than a day, so, it is fine and there is no need to jump in front of an approaching car. 

4. Find a healthy way to express your emotions.

PLEASE, express your emotions healthily. DO NOT express it by shouting at your dad, shouting at your mum, shouting at your cat, shouting at your dog, shouting at your Toyota, shouting at yourself etc. We have to express it nicely, like typing out a journal and locking it up of typing it out and password protect it. Not by jumping off a building or cutting oneself. One must express our emotions as if one hides them, one will explode like TNT, which is not beautiful for your family members to see. We cannot vomit what we feel out like choking on a fishball. This will hurt others' feelings. One must like tell a guardian, parent, discipline master etc to share the feelings with. This will make our stress level deflate like a balloon out of air. 

5. Try and keep things in perspective.

One must know his priorities, and not go Facebooking or playing Angry Birds everyday without doing any homework. We must keep track of what we are doing everyday and not get distracted. Like me. I always get distracted. Anyway, we can like use iProcrastinate to keep track of our homework, do some reflection everyday. By the way iProcrastinate is free form the Mac App Store. Look I got sidetracked again. 

Chapter 3 Family Affairs Blog Question ( Brendon Goh 07 )

The first point: Take it easy on yourself, especially if you are feeling down. Do something that makes you feel good about yourself.

I agree with the first point. Do not put too much stress on yourself and you will end up feeling horrible if you do not complete what you need to do. You will be very pressured and will be unable to relax. Everyone needs time off to go and relax, so it is important to go hard on yourself. Know what you can do and what you cannot in a certain amount of time. It Is also not your fault if a family problem is because of your parents, so do not take the blame or feel the pressure. There is nothing much you could do.

Also, do something that makes you feel good. Do something that you would love to do, that will make you happy and it is enjoyable to do. It can be reading a book, to playing sports etc. There are many fun things a person can do and it depends on individual preference. It is best to do something you like the most, and will make you forget the hardships you suffered because of your family.

The second point: No matter what the situation, try and find some sort of positive way to look at it.

The second point is very helpful, when you are experiencing family problems. You will feel sad and sometimes you will think that it is your fault. The truth is that, it is not your fault at all. At all times, try and stay positive, look at the situation from a different angle. For example, if your parents do not understand you at all and you want to be alone, and you end up arguing, you can look at it in a different angle. Your parents are concerned about you and you know that they are caring for you, can you just need to tell them that you need some privacy space. You will feel much better and happier if you turn the problem into something that will benefit you a lot, you will not feel sad anymore and will enjoy yourself. Being positive is very important in life, the moment you feel that something will happen, it will happen, so stay positive.

The third point: Know that everyone goes through disappointment, and the feelings that go along with it will not last forever.

This third point is very important, as sometimes people will feel very jealous of friends and other people around you, as you think they do not go through disappointment, but actually, they do. You may go and ask them how are you feeling but they will say they are fine, because most likely they are too scared to tell you as it might embarrassed themselves or the situation is too personal. On the outside, they might seem normal, but actually, everyone has disappointment, so do not think that you are the only one going through such suffering.

The second part is also important, the fact that the feelings will not last forever. The feelings only come when you are thinking about that situation, or when you are going through it at the moment. To get rid of it, change what you are thinking, think of something you enjoy doing, that will make you very happy and will make you forget all those hurtful feelings. You can also go and do the things that you will enjoy doing, like reading as you will concentrate on the book and will forget the sufferings and feelings, or when playing sports, you concentrate on the game and forget everything else.

The fourth point: Find a healthy way to express your emotions.

A person must find a way to express emotions. If you hide all your emotions, you will feel terrible, as if you would want to explode. As there is a lot of emotions inside you that you do not like, that are hurtful or harmful to other people around you, like your family and your loved ones, you will not express it by shouting at them or saying it to them, as it is rude to do it and it show that you do not respect you family and loved ones.

So, you must find a good and healthy way to express your emotions, you can have a journal, and make it secret and make sure no one sees it. You might want to buy one with a lock so just in case it is found, no one will be able to open it and read its content or write, except you. You can write whatever hurtful and harmful emotions in there, and the other person does not know, you will not hurt their feelings. Another is to type it is a computer, but again, make it secret. You can lock it with passwords, and you can type whatever you want inside.

The fifth and final point: Try and keep things in perspective.

Do some reflection at the end of the day. It can be something you want to thank for, like food, or doing something enjoyable, and why. It could be something that is good or bad. You can also state your feelings, but it would be from that very same day. For example, I want to thank my friend for teaching a maths concept that I do not know. Or I want to thank my parents for bringing me out out to eat a delicious meal at a restaurant. You might want to write it in a journal, type it sown or just think about it.

There are actually many other things you can reflect on, like things you learnt, things you did badly, things that make you angry, things that make you happy, how you solve difficult problems, and many more. Try asking using the 5 W and 1 H, Who, What, When Where, Why and How.

Done By:

Brendon Goh

Chapter 3 Family Affairs (Tan Hao Ming)

 

Family affairs chapter 3 Comprehension (Brendon Goh _ 07 )

Blog Question for Chapter 3 of Handout - Family Affairs (Tan Hao Ming)

The Given Question: There are times when family affairs disappoint you. On Page 79 Outside the Box’, there are four suggestions on how to handle disappointment. What do you think of each suggestion? If you do not have issues that are family related (include the wider family, adoptive family, guardian), consider other disappointments in your life with other people who are supposedly close to you.

Actually, I do agree with all the suggestions given by the author. I feel that a lot of things can cause you to feel disappointed, which this chapter was talking about family affairs. The most common family affairs that will make you feel disappointed are sibling rivalry and divorce. 

1) For the first suggestion by the author of the book, which is 'Take it easy on yourself, especially when you are feeling down. Do something that makes you feel good about yourself.' 


I agree with this statement because it is not your responsibility or you are not responsible for some family matters like divorce and sibling rivalry. We should not give ourselves too much matters to handle and also more pressure, especially not when we still have problems in school to handle. This will only make us feel like cutting ourselves and letting go of the problems without handling or dealing with them which will affect us in different ways in the future. 


For example, if we do not solve the problems of understanding a concept well in school with the help from a teacher or your fellow classmates, then it will be too late for us when we had to face our big examinations which will decide whether which path we will go. We should always try not to keep thinking about what is happening to us in our family, and if we do when we are feeling down, we may get stressed up and sick easily. Also, when we do something that makes us feel good about ourselves, we will be happier and we will be able to discover or recall our strengths that we had.

2) For the second suggestion, which is 'No matter what the situation, try to look at it positively or in a positive way.'


I agree with it because I feel that everyone should keep looking forward to what will be happening in the future instead of thinking about what has happened that will upset them, especially things which we wished should not have happened to us. If we keep thinking about the bad memories we had, it will not only make us feel even  upset, it will also make the people around us feel upset and we may hurt them.


We will hurt them as when they see we are upset, they will feel sorry for us too, especially our families, which is  very close to us and almost everyday the see you. Only by looking forward then we will not feel disappointment which we will have to handle. Disappointment is really not an easy thing to handle as it requires us some time to get through it, and in fact, disappointment may cause people to suffer for as long as a few years. That is why we should look forward. 


One more reason why I think looking forward is very important is because the things that will happen in the future are considered hard to predict, and so you would not know what is going to happen, except for those planned things(which are usually good things), and you will not feel disappointment as you had not come across them.

3) For the third suggestion, which is 'To know that everyone faces and goes through disappointment and that the feelings that go with it won't last forever'.


I agree with it because when you think about it, you will know that you are not the only one who faces such disappointment as they are others who do too. This will give you a feeling that you are not the only one going to solve your problems and that there will be support for you. 


If we know that everyone faces problems and goes through disappointment, then we will also get a feeling that having us going through disappointment at this stage is a normal thing, so we do not really have to worry and think about whether we are abnormal and that something is going to happen to us. There will also be someone for us to talk to when we have such problems, which is the people who are going through the same phase or cycle as us, especially people who are of the same age as us.

For the fourth suggestion, which is 'Find a healthy way to express your emotions, like writing your thoughts down in a journal, going out for a walk, doing something creative and talking to someone'.


I agree with this statement as doing what we like to do or what we normally do will make us forget about the problems with our families/family affairs, no matter whether it does or does not concern us. Like, for example, if we have sibling rivalry with our siblings, then if we go our for a walk, we will realised that the walk was useful as it has helped us to refresh our mind in a way that we will stop thinking about the sibling rivalry we had at home. This is same for the others.


If we do what we like to do, then we will feel happy. In this suggestion, it also mentioned that writing down your thoughts on the journal also one way to express your emotions healthily. I agree with this suggestion as by writing down our thoughts, or especially our problems in our life, we can relieve the pain in our heart and release them off into the words on the journal while maintaining and controlling our stress level.

5) For the fifth suggestion, which is 'Try to keep things in perspective and think about the things you are grateful or thankful for. It may be things that can stretch from thinking about an important person in your life to eating an Oreo cookie at school'.


I agree with this statement as doing this will make us happy by letting us think of the wonderful memories we had in your life, and will also help us in reflecting what we had gone through. When we reflect in what we had gone through, especially on things which we are grateful and thankful for, as in the suggestion above, we will keep thinking about what has happened that make us feel grateful for it, and this will help us by letting our minds drift away from the problems at school or problems with family affairs.


Another reason why I agree with this statement is also because when we think of a person we are grateful for or want to thank, we can simply think of what he/she had done which helped us or make us want to thank him/her or what qualities does he/she has as some of this will really helped us in dealing with problems. For example, if a person in life helped us in our life with patience, you can learn from him that you need patience to deal with such problems. Then we would not have to worry too/so much about the problems we had.


Yes, of course all these suggestions are useful to me when dealing with the disappointments I had with my family because they are related to the topic given and they are good suggestions. Since I am not a person who really knows how to solve different types of problems, though I like to solve problems, they are useful to  me in a way that I will feel better when using these suggestions to deal with the problems and that there will be more suggestions for me, where I can choose what to do. When I face problems about family affairs in the future, I will definitely take a look back at the suggestions for help if I do not know what to do.