Analysis of Lifespan Reflection - Assignment Example

Analysis of Lifespan Reflection The text is based on a psychosocial approach. The proponent of this approach is Erik Erikson. He viewed development as a set of challenges throughout the stages of life development. These stages are commonly referred to as Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages. The psychosocial approach is holistic since it integrates the interaction of the biological, psychological, and societal systems. Hence the complex term biopsychosocial. In this particular paper, I will be dealing with the issue of personality, moral and career development as influenced by the interaction of the three factors that Erik Erikson has laid emphasis in his theory of psychosocial approach. This is my life story. As a young child I interacted with my family, neighbors, friends, peers and adults. I did this through play, dance and storytelling within the neighborhood, school and church. Consequently, I was able to interact with everyone critically in such a way that helped me learn to appreciate that other people’s opinions matter. This helped me rid egocentricism which contributed significantly to the development of a healthy social relationship with the society. In time I learnt to deal with more than just my own problems and started dealing with those of others. In the process I felt a gratification every time I helped someone out of a problem. I wanted to do more of helping and in every opportunity I never failed to. This was at home, in school and anywhere else. Schooling played a critical role in my personality, moral and career development. I developed fluency in language use in my early years of attending school. This was a great achievement which raised my confidence in social interactions and self-expression. I couldn’t shy away from approaching and engaging anyone in a conversation. It helped me make more friends and extract issues from them which I would in turn address however best I could. Another benefit of improving my social relations in school was learning how to maintain a healthy relationship with all sorts of people as each had a distinct personality. I could take care of each person as (s)he was. A company of those people I shared interests in was particularly my preferred one. This is because we would form groups that matched our interests such as dancing, social retreats among others. These groups encouraged me to continue holding on to my dreams of a good career. In order to achieve my dream I had to achieve academically. Teacher became my best friends because I perceived them as the most important persons who would help me achieve my dreams. I was introduced to church at quite an early age. Being in church since then has helped shape my personality and gain a moral uprightness. Church taught me many values such as sharing, obedience, patience through the different stories that and songs that I learnt in Sunday school. Interacting with children from different backgrounds helped me to learn to appreciate people from all walks of life. The church challenged me to do to others as I would have them do to me. I therefore treated people as good as I expected them do to me. As a result I learn I was good at social interactions especially listening to people. Little did I know that this would very much influence my career choice. Family influences on me both positively and negatively. They have taught me values that guide me through each and every day activities and which have helped me to overcome challenges in life. Apart from providing me with the basic needs, they have provided me with the support in good times and in bad times. Because of their love, care, and their understanding they created in me a sense of belonging. My parents provided for physical and spiritual needs, taught me to love other members of my family, keep the commandments and be a law abiding citizen. The nurturing and caring that I got as I grew up to an adult from my family members has helped me to establish a healthy relationship with the other members of the society. I am able to relate with others in productive and mutually beneficial ways. A healthy relationship helps me to deal with problems such as stress as I have friends with whom I can confide and talk to and help me in overcoming the problem. The family environment for my childhood influenced my personality. Its stability has helped me to develop a rational thought processes. At times the family members were not always in harmony with each other, sometimes they disagree and have quarrels but dialogue ensured the establishment a decision together. This has helped me to recognize that even the best relationships can at times be frustrating and painful. Also through this I am able to listen to other people points of view and respect the fact that we have different perspectives. Having older siblings have also helped me to work really hard so that I can compete with them so that I can outdo them. They have challenged me to be better than them. Their bad experiences and other factors that have led to their failures have provided me with first-hand information on what to avoid. My parents being there for me at a very tender age helped me to have a stable emotional state in adulthood. They provided for all of my needs which have helped me to develop trust that the world will always provide for me. I am able to live each and every day with the hope that ever thing will be okay. A good family environment has helped me to develop a well-adjusted personality because of that I can be able to balance between my need s and my desires and the circumstances that influence the satisfaction of these needs. I am able to set realistic goals for myself that I can be able to achieve. For that reason am able to recognize the consequences of my actions and behavior is guided accordingly. I am able to choose the right path which will lead me to achieve my goals. In childhood my parent warned us about some bad friends and if were advised to avoid their company. This taught me that I should be very careful when selecting my friends, after interacting with new individuals for some time I am able to learn what kind of a person they are. A healthy personality has made me flexible enough to be able to change constantly as new experiences occur. Distant goals that I can’t be able to reach in a moment of time, am able to tolerate the delay and the challenges that come along with the nature of the goals. Also my family helped me to have a positive self-image. I can be able to acknowledge my strengths and weaknesses and use them to my advantage. This has helped me in my relations with others. A good family environment that helped me to express my emotions and feelings helped me in modifying my ability to express myself. The fact that they never shut me up when I wanted to speak out boosted my confidence and my self-esteem. This has helped me to express my feelings and emotions freely without fear of criticism and rejection. My family members gave me an opportunity to always choose for myself what I like and also what I want in life. This influenced positively to become independent and be in charge of my life. They trusted me in making the best choices and they also gave me freedom to explore my various options .That freedom has helped to be very responsible for all the decisions that I make. I very well consider my options and the consequences that follow from the decisions that I make because I have in my mind that I should be responsible for all that I do. Them trusting that I will choose what is best for myself has helped me to also believe in myself and has also boosted my self-confidence. I am always very keen in everything that I choose to do because I don’t want to break the trust that they have in me. This also helps me o always remain on my toes knowing that there is someone who is expecting so much from me. Being given freedom at an early age has helped me not to be very fast in experimenting on new things but first I have to think of the negative impacts that come along with something new. I can never be influenced by peer pressure easily because of that reason. My father played the traditional roles of providing for the family, protection and being the displinarian, he was also there for me emotionally which helped me to be emotionally stable and have a healthy social development. Family experiences and challenges have also to perceive the reality correctly. They helped me be aware that life is not a smooth road but it has very many obstacles that come along the way. The day to day strains that my parents went through so that they can be able to meet the family needs ,and the fact that they never gave up makes me to accept life challenges that I meet along the way and to also have the strength to overcome them. Their strains also taught that I have to really work hard so that I can be able to attain my goal and to overcome life challenges. They had several options that could have their problems solved, this is a lesson that I learnt from them that I should not depend on one thing. This has helped me even to even have different kind of friends so that if one fails me I have another option and life goes on as usual. My Family friends were not always well-wishers and they celebrated seeing the family falling down to pieces, some of them would miss advice my parents and would discourage them from undertaking some of their projects, however my parents always made the decision that was best for the family without their influence. This taught me so much that I should always stand on my own and to never allow anyone to make decisions for me. I also learnt that it is not everybody who we meet in life who wants us to be happy and successful, this has helped me to be careful when dealing with others and also when am taking the advice that they give me. My family helped to develop virtues such as respect, obedience, patience, honesty, courage, perseverance, hard work, kindness etc. As young children we were encouraged very much to make good use of these values. Because of these virtues I am of good character and am committed to doing the right thing no matter what the cost is. I am guided by the values and the principles and am not influenced by peer pressure. To achieve long term goals I need perseverance with all the challenges that come on the way. I need courage to be able to accomplish great targets. Hard work is one among the virtues I learnt from my family and I appreciate the consequences of this quality because it has helped achieve quite much in my life. The virtues have also helped me grow along other people in my society considering I come from one which doesn’t tolerate vices. With these virtues I can be able to relate with others and have meaningful relationship with them because with the virtues I can be able to respect the person they are. Having an older sibling who is alcoholic have also taught me some lessons. He would come home drunk and would at times be very aggressive and also violent to my brother. He disobeyed my parents and when he was talked to about his drinking habit; he would listen carefully and promise that he will stop and even tell us of his big plans in life. Unfortunately he never keeps any of his promises nor executes his plans the only thing he does is just renewing them every day. His drunkenness has resulted to him being in a bad relationship with my parents and he being a first born much is expected from him by the parents and also the other siblings. He has failed everyone in the family and I am sure that he has also failed himself because he had a very good wife but they divorced. On top of being a drunkard he is also a smoker which makes him very desperate when he has no money to buy the cigarettes because he has already become dependent on them and he cannot do without them. When he has no money he used to talk to my elder sisters to give some money on credit but unfortunately once he was given the money he never looked back to refund it but he would keep on giving them excuses until they give up on it. His behavior has impacted so much on my brother because he also started smoking, he is very rebellious and disobedient towards my parents and he never listen to anyone. I have learnt a lot about alcohol and substance abuse its negative consequences such violence, divorce, misuse of family resources, addiction, poor relationship with family members etc. I developed an effective survival skill of fitting in all situations, better or worse. The ‘come what may, I can never be discouraged’ attitude has made me resilient. Consequently I face challenges and emerge a victor, always. This is often, though, applicable to those challenges that I can handle on my own. However, many a time are when these challenges could have overwhelmed me and see me despair but the role of my parents, friends, mentors, spiritual parents, teachers and role models during crises has been overly important. Parents and friends, most importantly, have helped me majorly in personality development/or shaping, moral development and career choice. For instance; my father identified my strong area of interest and did as much as he could to reinforce it so that it finally became my area of interest and my career. I have also had a spiritual family which I always go back to in case I need any counselling or feel spiritually deprived. By so doing, I have able to make informed decision and solve problems in the right way. The concept of life-span development implies plasticity, a capacity for adaptive reorganization at the neurological, psychological, and behavioral levels (Newman, 2012). The text (Development Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach) has had, in many instances, concord with my life’s experiences. When the infant’s limbs achieve a certain length and muscle strength, the baby is able to reach out from a sitting position to begin crawling—a new form of locomotion. This results in new opportunities for exploration of the environment which in turn results in new neural networks and changes in the organization of the brain (Newman, 2012). This is evident in my earlier experiences. When I first learnt swimming, I felt an impact in my mind which has developed to date. Swimming has been my best sporting activity stress management strategy. Change may be attributed to biological maturation, systematic socialization, self-directed striving, and to the interaction of these forces (Newman, 2012). Referring to my life, an interaction of the above factors has led to the person I am today. Every improvement achieved cognitively, the systematic socialization that I have experienced in within the course of education, the goals that I had and how all these have interacted towards an achievement is also true. Naively, I thought that when I grew up to be an adult, all the challenges I faced as a young one would all disappear and live a stress free life. However, the endless nature of life’s challenges has almost had me succumb to the challenges. For instance, I have always been helpful to almost everyone in my life but on the other hand, many people show no gratitude. This can at times be dissuading but because helpfulness is a virtue, I choose not to be dissuaded. I have set goals earlier in my academics courses and day to day life. I have had achievements and failures. The best thing, though, is that I don’t fail to try even when the challenge seems almost impossible to be dealt with. Therefore I have never had a sufficient reason not to try. In every situation I always tell myself that I am the last word; ‘I can do it’. I always achieve because when I fail to hit my target, I learn from the mistakes that I made trying. Otherwise, my interaction with the society is partially motivated my career. Learning how to deal with challenges arising from social relations, help me view social life from a critical point of view which consequently influences my performance in my career. My view on my expectations on how things would ‘turn out’ is so far so good. Life expectancy is a projection of the number of years one can expect to live (Newman, 2012). I have a long way to go to be considered an elderly but I am close to in the prime of life. The society expects of me to get married. Married couples are more likely to be embedded in an effective social network, to engage in healthy behaviors, and to live longer (Newman, 2012). Many people have observed and commented that I am very helpful. Being a mother and a wife, I aim to achieve an all-round personality, unlike this one which is dominated by helpfulness, in the next 10 years so that I can be always there for my family. Establishing a balance between my career and marriage is another important plan in my life. I therefore prefer a good career that will give me an advantage to have control over my time and less exposure to dangerous work conditions. On the other hand, I don’t expect to get into health challenges or adopt risky lifestyle which could result to lower level of functioning in later life. Well, the elderly stage of development and growth is referred to as ills and bills as it is characterized by illnesses and hospital bills but that should not conventionally be the case. To ensure that I am on the safe side I have to invest in a health insurance, a well-balanced diet and daily physical exercise. References Newman, B. M., & Newman, P. R. (2012). Development through life: A psychosocial approach. 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