In order to envision desired changes with my behavior, skills, and identity in the future, it is essential to analyze who I am as a person today. This allows me to ascertain how far away I am from reaching certain goals and whether the time estimates hypothesized by me of acquiring them are realistic. The ability to reflect on the past and present is integral to understanding any form of progress, which is an especially complex ordeal when it comes to tracking development of an individual. As such, I have outlined seven particular fundamental skills, behaviors, or changes I would like to focus on in the near future. The seven selected changes include the ability to manage my time efficiently, to build and maintain habits, to consult and support ethical beliefs through my actions, improve my communication, adaptability, self-confidence and the aptitude to react calmly to anxieties of the future. I believe that I possess a number of these skills already, but need further development in order for them to benefit me in the future.
Currently, I am able to manage my time sufficiently in a way that allows me to complete academic tasks, work-related matters, and partake in important aspects of my personal life. However, when I finish college and become more involved in my career, I am unlikely to devote time to other important facets in my life such as interests, the development of non-work-related skills, social life, and community support. It would be beneficial to implement effective time management skills before I become overwhelmed with work-related engagements and am unable to formulate a strategy that makes balanced use of my time. While career-oriented components are important to my future, they are not the only aspects of my development that I would like to prioritize. I find it very important to develop my personal skills, socialize with friends and family frequently, and support my community through direct contributions. Currently, my time management skills are not effective enough to facilitate such a balance. As such, research and experimentation with time management systems is essential to my future.
Currently, my habit maintenance is not adequate as I am unable to continuously support certain habits such as working out, eating healthy, reading daily, and a number of other activities I find important to my life and future. Habits are essential in the maintenance of a person’s life including their health, skill and personal growth, and the use of time effectively (Cecilia Health, 2020). As such, my current state lacks effective habit support. This is possibly due to me attempting to introduce too many habits at once and setting very high goals. If I begin to introduce habits one by one to my life with minimal and reachable targets, I am more likely to continue maintaining more habits in the future. While I may not be able to achieve the maintenance of all my habits in the future, I am more likely to uphold what I find most beneficial and important.
With current changes and growth in the world, as consumers and employees, we are often unable to make decisions or take actions that agree with our morals or ethics. As a consumer, I often make purchases that support things I do not ethically agree with such as damages to the environment, minimum wage labor, or a number of other factors that negatively contribute to the world. Currently, I do not have the financial stability or access to products or services that are made and distributed ethically. In the case that I become sufficiently stable in terms of finance and employment in the future, I would like to use more of my earnings to support firms and individuals that produce ethical goods. As such, my current impact on the support of negative attributes of mass-production is likely to decrease in the future in which I am able to make more ethical choices concerning purchasing or goods and services.
For both career and personal development, effective communication is important. While I consider myself a good listener and efficient communicator, my experience engaging with people from different backgrounds, beliefs, specializations, ages, and communication styles is limited. I am able to hold debates, discussions, and consultations with peers and friends, these are usually individuals who have similar ages, interests, and beliefs as me. I believe that even if the fundamental ideologies of people differ, they can establish equal and civil conversation. However, in order to do so, this requires at least one of the parties to be able to engage in effective communication through a number of techniques and strategies. In the future, I envision myself employing a number of these techniques in order to achieve contact and cooperation with any or most people I engage with. This would also include communication with large groups, which is something I am currently unable to do efficiently.
In the present day, I am not adept at being flexible or adaptable about academic, personal, or work-related tasks. I prefer to finish one project or assignment before beginning another. However, in the future it is likely that I will have to switch between errands, tasks, and activities frequently in order to either meet deadlines or make effective progress. As such, it is vital for me to use flexibility more frequently in my daily activities, such as being able to take breaks and switch assignments or to schedule certain personal developmental practices between academic and work-related functions. Additionally, my current exposure to adaptability will likely result in the fact that switching between engagements will cause me less stress and anxiety in the future. Adaptability is related to time management, as in the future I will become more accommodating with deciding which tasks require how much time.
While the aforementioned changes are usually related to skills or professional habits, self-confidence is a personal attribute that I find is currently lacking within my behavior. I find that I am infrequently confident in my work, choices, or future regardless of feedback or personal analysis of these factors such as grades, reflections, and other forms of measurement. The improvement of confidence cannot be attributed to one particular practice or problem, and as such, this change will likely take the most time and effort. Despite this, I envision a future version of myself that is more confident of my work, identity, and choices. Such a growth can be supported by unbiased analyses of my work, the ability to contrast positives to negatives within my habits and lifestyles, and the capability to not take feedback as an attack or the capacity to disregard poorly-constructed Christmas. As such, the difference between my current lack of confidence and the future of its development will likely be in my ability to engage with outside and personal feedback in a way that is constructive and beneficial.
Another interpersonal characteristic that I currently am unable to formulate successfully is the ability to cope with anxieties related to the future. Due to the changes in the world that are social, economic, cultural, and political, I often have anxieties that impact my ability to make decisions calmly and rationally. While I know it is impossible to eliminate the fear and worry that comes with such anxiety, the ability to cope with them effectively and react calmly to changes and issues are vital to my personal growth. In the future, I would prefer if my position of matters that I find important not be swayed by abrupt or negative changes in the world. In the future, my skills with coping with such fear and worries can result in me continuing to have certainty and hope in the future of my community, employment, and myself in spite of any issues and adverse impacts. As such, I would be an individual that is calmer in tense situations and under pressure, whereas I currently withdraw from certain engagements and opportunities.
While the aforementioned seven factors are the most important to my development as an individual, there are a number of other factors that are currently unknown to me but can impact my future. Currently, I am developing a number of my desired skills and characteristics. I envision my future self as more confident and able to deal with difficulties through effective communication, management, adaptability, beneficial habits, and increased confidence.
Work Cited
Cecilia Health. “Understanding Habits and Why They are Important to our Health”. Cecilia Health, 2020, Web.