RESPOND WITH 100 WORDS MINIMUM TO EACH STUDENT'S POSTS***

What are your best strategies for choosing to remain calm despite people that would try to pull you into their box?

First Student:

"My best strategy for when people try to pull me into their box is to stay calm and pull away until Ive had time to think about the situation. There are times when I receive emails that are frustrating Im sure most people experience this! I always make sure to wait until the next morning to respond when I am feeling aggravated. Because I work for a small organization, we have a lot of third-party lenders that we rely on to administer lending programs. I like the relationships that we build with our contacts, and to keep a healthy relationship, sometimes its better to wait and analyze the situation when receiving negative correspondence.

I believe there is a slight difference between being calm and being mindful. Mindfulness is defined as the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something. This is a mental state of focusing on what is happening in the present moment. When trying to remain calm, you can focus on being positive, slowing down, or even disconnecting from a situation. The biggest difference between mindfulness and remaining calm is the fact that mindfulness requires one to be aware of the moment and how you are feeling and remaining calm sometimes requires people to disconnect and come back to the situation and feeling in the future."

How do you react when you are feeling defensive?

Second Student:

"I have a couple signs that I am aware of when I become defensive. The first and most noticeable is a sense of high energy. I get the urge to stand up and move or start using more hand gestures. Along with that usually comes a flood of information. The high energy speeds up my talking and I feel like I need to get everything I am thinking out to make my point. In the moment I feel like it is just passion, however later I realize it was because I felt defensive in some way. To help these I need to realize I am doing them and then take a second to slow down. Take a breath and begin to gather my thoughts so I can be clear with myself and those I am speaking with. Another trait I can have is to go silent and not say or react to anything. This is usually if I have been feeling irritated already so I now feel my words wont do any good. I shut off and just try to move on from the situation rather than face it head on. For this I should at least write down what I am thinking so I can comeback to those thought later. Some might need to be thrown away because they were due to my defensive mindset and others may be important for the group. I believe that the biggest part for myself to work on my defensiveness is to acknowledge when I enter that state, take a second to gather myself and check my self-talk. Make sure I am not saying things to myself to escalate the situation further. "

What movie do you suggest that we watch to be inspired to greater peacefulness?

Third Student:

"

When thinking of a movie that inspires peacefulness I think of Forest Gump. A movie about a simple man who doesn't have the highest IQ but how he inspired others to be better and live more. Forest showed through his experiences how to be loyal to others. Throughout this movie many of the people Forest is closest to let him down and betray him but he remains loyal to them and show forgiveness. Another thing that I found inspiring about this movie is how it teaches how to have faith in where life takes you. With Forest's famous line, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get" it shows that no matter the circumstances we have to have faith in our decisions and understand that end up exactly where we are meant to be"

MINIMUM 100 WORD REPLIES TO EACH STUDENT*