Russel John P.

Coria Understanding the Self

BSIE 1-4 Ms. Lorraine Charmayne S. Manansala

CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL:

Extraordinary Teens
A book critique

“No one can make you mad unless you let them. It’s your choice. You choose to be mad.”
When you grow up, you must build yourself also. Building yourself must not construct by others,
you should create “you” by yourself. Making yourself is not based from others, it is from the
lessons you learned as time goes by. It is not bad to accept other’s critique, but don’t make it a
basis on how you will live. You have the freedom to express yourself. When someone say bad to
you or look down on you, don’t be affected, don’t let that bad aura filled yourself. I felt that
when I was in high school, I felt that depression and I struggled with my self-esteem. But I
realized that I must not be affected of what people will say, it’s my life actually, and I don’t need
people’s approval on every decision I made.

“We create our habits and habits create us.” You must do things based on what you like,
try to explore many things and decide on what will you choose to do most. It is necessary to
discover your talents and habits. If you are comfortable and happy with the things you do, you
make yourself a productive in any aspects. It is important to choose things that you are enjoying
with. For example, in making decision, on choosing the course you want to take on college, you
must think carefully and choose the best one that suit your personality. If you’re happy on what
you do, that thing will build you positively.

“Sometimes competition can be healthy, but the one area that we should not compete in
is our relationships.” It’s not your friend versus you, your teacher versus you, or your parents
versus you. You should not think that anything is a competition, you must consider the benefit of
the doubt. Every person in this world have their own challenges in their life. Just like you,
everyone has their problems, fighting for their dreams. Don’t be too selfish, if you are in an
argument, you must think the point of view of your opponent, learn to listen, not all the time
you are right, sometimes we tend to hurt others without knowing it, be cautious on what you say
and what you do.

“Smart people learn from their mistakes, but really smart people learn from the mistakes
of others.” Nobody’s perfect, not all the time we make a right decision, but we can also learn
something from others.

Every decision we made is so important as time goes by, it carve our plans and goals in
life. For every decision, there are always a consequence. For every actions we made, there’s a
big impact on our lives – good or bad. The important is as we go along the journey, we can make
better decisions.

“The fastest way to change your life is to change how you think.” When we change our
perspective and try to understand more other’s people perspective, we definitely change our
experiences. We never knew the background or what is happening to other’s people lives, so the
best thing to do is to look for the positive and look out for each other. Instead of thinking badly
about others, or even about yourself, search for the win-win scenario.