“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

” – Socrates

Who am I? What am I? Where am I going? What is my purpose? These questions circled

around my head seeking for answers. Having a reflection to fully understand myself and learn my
capabilities. But now I realize that the roles we play in our individual society offer us a sense of
identity and belonging. Having diverse environments and habitats show us different individuality
and how we look in life making us unique.

I had a reflection of myself and learned so much as we go through this subject. I see myself
and hits me on some of the examples that is being elaborated by Ms. Dakiapo. How stressed really
am I? Why I am being exposed to this? How will I cope up? As I get older, I felt that it is like usual
to feel stress. I think it is natural to be stressed as a college student and as a person, everyone has
different things to think about and how they handle it. I remember we have taken stress surveys
that is given by Ms. Dakiapo, because I feel like I needed to fully understand how stressed I am
and how I react to stress. As expected with that survey, my stress level is above average.

At some point in their lives, everyone felt the weight of the world coming down on them.
Not everyone is coping with the same level of stress and there are several factors that can affect
our lives and cause us to experience higher or lower levels of stress. I do not really know what
other people are mostly stressing about, but I know they all have their own motivations and ways
to cope. Personally, I have been going through a lot of school works as an engineering student –
final exams, and beating deadlines of projects. At home I should deal with chores because I’m
only living in an apartment. But all of this, I breathe deep, I just think that everything will be fine,
just one by one I always think that eventually I could finish all of this. We live with it, deal with
it, and above all worry about it. I learned from Ms. Dakiapo that it is all about taking charge of
handling stress: taking charge of my feelings, emotions, schedule setting, and how I deal with
problems. The ultimate objective is a healthy life, with time for school, friendship and family, rest,
and enjoyment – plus the ability to stand up under pressure and overcome head-on obstacles.

After that, self-care takes place. This has been a line in my head that self-care is not just
important, it is crucial. I treat self-care as a reward sometimes. I'm so hungry I can hardly think of
it, but before I eat lunch, I'll force myself to finish a lot of work. What I do is make my job harder
making myself feel exhausted. I get so distracted and carried away living in our daily lives that we
neglect about myself. Self-care, in other words, is not a reward it is part of that effort. Clearly, the
physical aspect is significant, but when most people talk about self-care, they talk about emotional
health: coping with stress, anxiety, grief, depression. Ms. Dakiapo made me feel guilty that we
should not abuse our body but listen to it when it needs a break. My mind would feel relaxed, free,
and my body feels strong to create what it really wants. As far as I currently feel, self-care can
manage stress as Ms. Dakiapo told us. I feel much better now. Also thanking my family for the
motivation to set aside everything to have perseverance to face any challenges. I'm afraid
sometimes of facing challenges and failing, but I know it is the way to succeed. It takes discipline,
focus and the courage to say no to immediate gratification in order to be able to say yes to long-
term results. It enables the ability to learn new skills and to update knowledge continuously. With
little visible improvement, it involves doing the same thing repeatedly, like a hamster on a wheel
or a car stuck in mud. And therefore, it requires risk-taking that has no positive outcome
guarantees.