In Susan Jones Sears’ article, Tips on Becoming Personally Effective, the author gives advice about how to be successful in college and in life. Sears says that effective people have many factors which contributes to their success; emphasizing that high achievers often have goals, giving them a sense of purpose. Therefore, we should think about our goal and our purpose. She also explains that little things which annoys us actually also drain our energy; if possible we should try to eliminate them over time. Sears explicitly says to get rid of things we do not need and simplify our schedule to allow us to focus on what is really important in our lives. She advises that we need to manage our time; giving us a suggestion to write down our daily routines and analyze if what we spend our time doing is what we really should be doing. To be a productive person, she says that we need to learn how to say “no” and manage our money, especially paying off our credit card. Sears recommends creating a network of friends that can support us and making time in our schedule for ourselves with things that we enjoy. She highly urges that to really be productive, we must learn where our stressors are and how to manage them effectively. She refers to psychologist Donald Meichenbaum; explaining that we may be stressing because we think something is too hard or challenging. She presents three categories of stressor: external physical stimuli, interpersonal difficulties with others, and internal stimuli. Sears explains specific stressors that we may be encountering: environmental stressors, life event stressors, and daily hassles. Next she discusses ways to help manage stress, such as relaxation training and leading a healthy lifestyle. Sears stresses about accepting and adjusting to change; inferring that we may not always be able to control what is happening around us, but we should try to control our behavior. She concludes with a brief summary of her article, highlighting that these characteristics can help enhance our lives.
I think the suggestions provided in Tips on Becoming personally Effective by Susan Jones Sears are very beneficial. The topics she addresses and explains are subjects that are common in the general population. The only critique I really have is that the things which she discussed are easier said than done. The subject most surprising to me is “making time for yourself.” I did not think that being effective would also consist of making time for yourself, especially when you are busy. However, I really like this point because after reading the subtitle and really thinking about it, I connected making time for “yourself” to your overall health and mentality. I like this advice the most and it is probably one that I should be working on because I tend to forget to make time for myself and end up burning myself out; which generally leads to me doing things that are unproductive. Overall the emphasis that I get from Sears’ article is that it’s really up to us on how effective we can be.
In Standing Up for Yourself-Without Stepping on Others by Ruthann Fox-Hines, the author describes assertive behavior in hopes of it benefiting us as much as it has benefitted her. She emphasizes upon effectively communicating how we feel and what we need to others. She advises not to “pick up our communication skills in a disorganized fashion,” explaining that it will only lead us to be either passive, aggressive, or passive aggressive communicators. She emphasizes upon becoming an assertive communicator, standing up for our rights without denying others of their rights. She adds that we need to have respect and be responsible for only our self, our actions, and our opinions. To differentiate between what we should be doing and what we should not being doing, Fox-Hines provides an example of each; highlighting that is we are assertive, we can better communicate our perspective to the other person. Next she gives the formula to assertiveness, saying that we should follow R/-E, R, and S. She explains each of the acronym in the formula, saying that R/-E is respecting the other person, R is respecting yourself, and S is being specific with what you are talking about. She stresses that we need to think about how we respond, providing us with a dialogue as an example. Then explaining the many ways that the character, Mark can respond to what John had said. Fox-Hines acknowledges that being an effective communicator will take practice and time so we should practice effective communicating skills through practice and training. She concludes by giving activities that we can do to practice effective communication skills.
The advice, being an assertive communicator, in Ruthann Fox-Hines’ article, Standing Up for Yourself-Without Stepping on Others is a very beneficial and useful tool in life. From the beginning of her article, I can tell that being assertive is really meaningful to Fox-Hines. She’s sharing something special to her, which I think is the most interesting and attention-grabbing way she could discuss any topic with. I think many people acknowledge the points that she points out, but it is hard to actually do it because when it is put into action, your emotions and many other factors get involved. Being assertive is something I struggle with and I think many, if not the majority, struggles with the same issue as well. Especially since we are currently in a time of technology; we are too use to either saying nothing at all or saying what we feel. I am guilty of being anything other than assertive, even though I try; but as Fox-Hines had pointed out, it takes time. I hope I can become an effective communicator because it will benefit not only me, but others that I interact with.