Alyssa Henderson

COMM 2120

Susan Knott

Dec 14th, 2018

Overview

My journey with my person changes project this semester, will be summarized through this

final paper. My goals consisted of becoming more other-oriented and conscious of others’

thoughts and feelings. I applied several strategies throughout my process to help aid me in

accomplishing these goals. Some of these strategies include, other orientation (Beebe, pp.

24,26,57), self and interaction with others (Beebe, pp. 49), and mindfulness: being consciously

aware (Beebe, pp. 32). Some of the obstacles I encountered were my stubbornness of applying

my strategies when the other person wasn’t treating me the same, and my busy life that made

it difficult to stay focused on the task at hand. My end results were incredible! More than I ever

expected but still needs to be maintained with constant practice. My future goal from here on

out is to make these strategies a habit where I can do them without thinking. That would really

improve who I am.

Unwanted Communication Pattern

When I began this journey of personal change, I knew exactly what communication skill I lacked

and what problem I wanted to address and hopefully fix. That problem was being too self-
centered and not thinking of other thoughts and feelings. Specifically, not leaving any room for

others to share their opinion and feel safe around me to do so without being told what to do or

be criticized. Here are some specific examples of when this would occur and how this flaw

would affect my conversation with others:

Example 1

Lexy: My boyfriend and I are fighting a lot. We share a lot of differing opinions from one

another.

Me: Oh well I think you’re just young and in high school and you won’t stay with him forever

anyways.

Lexy: (Begins to cry) But I love him, I don’t want to leave him.

This conversation led to Lexy not coming to me anymore with her problems and concerns. This

consequence really was rough because she is my little sister and I want her to be able to come

to me with anything and I want to be able to make her feel better.

Example 2:

Mike: Can we watch my favorite movie tonight?

Alyssa: (Busy and distracted) I am doing something else.

This is an example of me not being mindful of my partner of the things he loves and wants to

do. I was so caught up with my own things that I didn’t realize this was important to him. The

consequence to this led to a diminished relationship. He began to not want to do things for me

since he wasn’t getting anything in return. He felt unappreciated.

Mindfulness is the ability to consciously think about what you are doing and experiencing,

(Beebe, pp. 32) according to our text. So, to be mindful of others is to be aware and in tune to

their actions and words and to experience them. Be mindful of them and especially to what

they are feeling.

Strategies

At the beginning of this semester, I decided on some specific strategies taken from our

textbook, that would help me to obtain my communication goal. These strategies were to be

mindful and consciously aware, work on myself and interactions with others, and lastly to

become more other-oriented.

Mindfulness: Being Consciously Aware

I wanted to implement mindfulness into my daily life because I knew it would help me to move

towards my goal of being more mindful of others and their thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness

is the ability to consciously think about what you are doing and experiencing (Beebe, pp. 32).

When you are actively aware of what you are experiencing you can really tune into others and

their expressions, they are showing to you. I knew that becoming more mindful would allow me

to open my ears and my mind and consciously listen to others to be able to focus on them more

and what they are sharing than the focus being on me and my opinions. I also wanted to work

on my symbolic self-awareness which is the unique human ability to think about oneself and

use language (symbols) to represent oneself to others (Beebe, pp. 33). I was having a hard time

with my relationships because I was just throwing out my thoughts and feelings without really
thinking of them beforehand. This caused a lot of insensitivity to other thoughts, feelings and

emotions. So, this became another strategy to help towards my goal.

Self and Interaction with Others

I learned from the text that your image of yourself and your sense of self-worth directly affect

how you interact with others (Beebe, pp. 49). So, I needed to be more cautious when around or

communicating with others. Who I think I am, doesn’t necessarily mean another perceives me

that way. When I would passionately ramble through my thoughts and feelings, I would end up

not leaving any room for others to speak and that was something I really struggled with. I didn’t

really see these things since I was so caught up with being heard but I learned that others may

have been perceiving it differently. For example, they might have felt that I am so sure and set

on what I think that there is no need to add their input, or the language I was using may

translate that their way of thinking is wrong and “this is how it should be done”. I decided to

put into action our past concept of mindfulness again and was became more consciously aware

that others might be perceiving me much differently than I perceive myself. I avoided selfish

thinking and brought others in to my thoughts as well. My practice of this showed me results of

others communicating more openly with me. I wanted to hear other’s thoughts and opinions

and I wanted there to be mutual respect between us. This worked because I have learned about

how others perceive me differently than who I think I am, and it helped me to be more

conscious and other oriented.

Other-Orientation
To be other-oriented is to be aware of the thoughts, needs, experiences, personality, emotions,

motives, desires, culture, and goals of your communication partner while still maintaining your

own integrity (Beebe, pp. 2). This strategy seemed important and I had an idea that it would be

the most helpful in my process. I wanted to be able to consider the interest of others,

empathize, adapt and be ethical when communicating with others to achieve my goal this

semester. Though I wasn’t aware of this before, I tended to be an egocentric communicator in

my communicating. An egocentric communicator is a person who creates messages without

giving much thought to the person who is listening; a communicator who is self-focused and

self-absorbed (Beebe, pp. 24). I dropped this habit of mine by considering the interest of

others. I also empathized and put into consideration others’ feelings and emotions when

communicating my thoughts with them. Being flexible also helped me with adaption when

communicating, I was able to feel out the situation and then communicate what best fit the

other person. Lastly of course I wanted to be ethical. I wanted to make sure I never said

anything that could be harmful or disrespectful. I wanted to avoid speaking selfishly without

thinking about the interest and feelings of others. I put myself in their shoes. I became other-

oriented and saw a sense of respect between my communicator and I, where we both felt

comfortable and safe with each other. Other- orientation really helped me achieve my goal

because it put the other person first rather than it just being about me.

Constraints

Some of the specific obstacles that I encountered were mostly to do with myself. It is difficult to

break bad habits and make new ones. Some of the issues I was facing were due to just going

about life fast and distracted and very unconscious. This made it very difficult to be aware of
others and their thoughts and feelings when I wasn’t aware of much in the first place except

myself. I had to break out of this habit and it made it difficult to reach my goal.

Other orientation and mindfulness of others can also be hard to achieve when the other person

is being disrespectful towards you and/or making you quite upset. I found it difficult to be able

to be other oriented and mindful of others when they were not doing the same for me. I can be

very stubborn, and it was a huge obstacle for me to treat others with other-orientation and

mindfulness when they were not treating me that way! I quickly realized although that when I

fought the stubbornness and continued my strategies almost every person began to treat me

kindly and with respect back since I was treating them that way. It took a while to finally learn

this but once I did, I felt powerful and confident in my communication skills.

Implementation

I implemented my strategies on a day to day basis through work, family, friends and even

strangers. Starting out with being mindful- what really helped me to be conscious and mindful

was meditation. The practice of meditating grounded me and brought me back into my body

and really aided me in being more conscious of my surroundings. I noticed that my

communication wasn’t going as planned a couple times specifically with my partner Mike, so I

took a few minutes to meditate came back and my mindfulness really turned the situation

around. I was then able to be conscious of his thoughts and feelings and really listen to him.

Other-orientation was something I tried to implement to everyone I came into contact. One

specific example that helped me to do this was writing “treat others as you want to be treated”

on my hand, as my phone background picture, and in my planner. This helped remind me to be

other-oriented. I was able to treat them with respect and kindness no matter who they were.

Not only would I say this impacted others in a positive way, it really turned my happiness

around. It made my days brighter on a constant basis. I was able to really challenge this goal

when I was faced with new and different people from me. In my journal, I reflected on a new

coworker at work and even some new friends from India with a big culture difference from me.

My experience with them went well due to me learning my new skill of other-orientation. I also

worked on self and interaction with others. My goal was to be conscious of the fact that not

everyone perceived me as I perceived myself. Not everyone might assume that I have the best

intentions. I was able to work on this one specifically at work one day. A new co-worker I was

training was struggling and I was quite busy and not being very mindful of her, due to this she

became frustrated with me and didn’t appreciate that I was not showing her any patience. I

hadn’t realized she was perceiving me that way, I just assumed she knew my intentions were

good. This was an example of an eye opener for me during this process.

Results

I experienced plenty of consequences during this project and some were positive, and others

were negative. I experienced a lot of great positive consequences with working on my goals. My

relationships in general improved with others but specifically my sister, who was the main

person I wanted to strengthen my relationship with. My partner and I’s relationship also

improved and has made living together even more enjoyable. Though I had some positives, I

also experienced some negative consequences. These were consequences that I was already

experiencing beforehand but wasn’t as aware of, or aware at all! When I didn’t reach my goals

or forgot to use my strategies, I could easily see the difference in my experiences and
conversations with others. It disturbed the peace, hurt feelings, and caused bad days to occur.

It even degraded my relationships with others, which was a huge negative consequence.

I am so happy and satisfied about the changes I have made. All the negative consequences that

I became aware of and was able to turn into positive consequences really opened and changed

my perspective on the skill of communication and how important it can be. I am so glad I took

the time for this semester project and really worked hard at it. It wasn’t just for a grade for a

class, it was to better my communication skills and improve my relationships in the long run. I

am so thankful for this opportunity and have a new outlook on communication. It may seem

like there is no way to change or better your communication skills but if you just start small and

continue working on them, it really pays off and you build new habits.

Recommendations

I plan on continuing these strategies in my day to day life since they bring me such great

benefits. When I fail to do this, or even forget the impact it makes it much clearer now then

before and makes me continue to work hard on these obtaining my goals. I specifically want to

continue these strategies with my sister Lexy to keep growing our relationship as sisters.

Another goal I would like to add to my list is to become a more responsive. Responsiveness is

the tendency to sensitive to the needs of others, including being sympathetic to other’s feelings

and placing the feelings of others above one’s own feelings (Beebe, pp. 55). This is along the

same lines of what I have been working on, but I would like to specifically try this one with my

partner, Mike. I think it could really benefit out relationship.

References
 Beebe, Beebe, & Redmond. (2014). Interpersonal Communication: Relating to Others.

Boston: Pearson.

 Knott. (2018). Canvas Readings for COMM 2110.

Available at: https://slcc.instructure.com/courses/487649/modules