PSMJ 4 Stress Management Assignment

PSMJ 4 Stress Management Assignment

PSMJ 4 Stress Management Assignment

PSMJ 4 – Final Reflection & Reflecting on the Personal Change Process!

Often, when reading and learning about the process of growth and change, these processes can appear to be smooth, staged, and charted-like movements. However — in reality — change can be more of a “start-stop-opps!-wait!-okay–here we go again-going forward!” kind of process!

Something often neglected in the teaching about change and learning processes are that both change and learning are actually quite messy and even uncomfortable processes! Often a plan for change needs to be re-worked or revised. People learn and grow as they change — and as a result — new information needs to be added or old information needs to be revised. Sometimes the pace of change may need to be amended. A person may need to slow down, take a breath and revise their change process. Alternately, because of new insights or confidence, a person may want to and to speed up their plan. Sometimes, a person may even realize they have missed a step and they need to work on some small points of change before they can move into the next step. As I said — it’s often messy Oh, and did I mention? Change takes work, patience, and perseverance — stick-to-it! Care for yourself and celebrate your process — even the smallest parts.

Remember your first journal entry? It was your “Initial Reflection.” Take a minute to dig that out of your files and read over them. Now, after you finish reading it, take a minute or so and think about just how much you have learned this semester. You have read, talked about, written about, made observations about yourself and others – all with the underlying goal of learning more about stress and ways to address stress. Wow! I mean it, think for a minute just how much you have accomplished!

For this first part of your last journal entry, I’d like to review your previous PSMJ journals (PSMJ Initial Reflection, PSMJ 1, 2, and 3) and write about what you have learned about the process of change. You’ve read a lot about ways to change your reactions to stress and ways to alter health patterns to cope with stress healthfully. Plus you created a plan to address one of your stressors and you put that plan into action for one week.

Remember, this can be done in paper format, Q & A (remember it needs to be more than 5 sentence answers for credit) or video (remember to follow the regulations set in the Discussion Board Protocol): After looking back at all your journals, answer the following questions regarding your PSMJ journals.

1. How is all this stress management really going for you?
2. What was your biggest “a-ha” moment? What insights have you gained?
3. How do you plan to use these insights to grow or modify your personal change process? Give a specific example or two.
4. What is the most significant thing you have learned about the personal change process?
5. If a friend or family member wanted to embark on a personal change process, what knowledge could you pass on to them to support their efforts?

For this second part of your last journal entry, I’d like to follow the list below and reflect on what you have learned and how you have grown your self-awareness. One purpose of this assignment is for you to develop a clearer understanding of just how much you have learned – and, give yourself some well-deserved pats on the back for your work! Another purpose is for you to consider where you want to take your learning from here. Learning does not end with a class or a degree – The world is a great big place and there is always more to know/learn/explore!

1. What do you now know about stress in yourself that you learned during this class?
2. What do you now know about stress in your community that you learned during this class?
3. Describe if you handle stress differently based on what you’ve learned in this class. How?
4. Revisit your biggest questions and/or concerns about stress in yourself and in your community. Were any of these questions answered or concerns addressed?
5. What have you learned that has lead to a change in the way you handle stress and why?
6. Did you gain any new awareness of or are using any new resources as a result of this course?
7. Did you learn what you wanted to from this course? Why or why not?
8. What is the one thing you would change about this course that you believe would make it better?
9. What was the most helpful top 3 chapters of the textbook you felt really gave you insight?
10. What is did you learn during this course that you think you will keep using over and over?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument. PSMJ 4 Stress Management Assignment