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Understanding the Self

by

Leonard James T. Roa, Bryan R. Campilan

and

Jose Rizal Memorial State University

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Page and Cover designed: Leonard James T. Roa

ISBN ___________________

First Edition. _____________

JOSE RIZAL MEMORIAL STATE UNIVERSITY

Gov. Guading Adaza St. Sta Cruz, Dapitan City, 7101
Tel. No. (065) 908-8294
jrmsumain.univpres@gmail.com

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Acknowledgment

The journey of the making of this module is made memorable and fun because of
the people that gave us inspiration and their unending support. These are the people who
were very instrumental for this work and without whom we would have not finish this
material for learning.

We would like to thank Dr. Daylinda Luz R. Laput, Ph.D, the JRMSU System
President, and Dr. Elpidio H. Nodado Jr, Ed.D, the Associate Dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences – Main Campus, for the initiative and opportunity in letting us, part-timers,
participate in the making of the modules. The same gratitude goes to the regular faculty
and program heads of the CAS department for their aid and support for the betterment of
the material.

Mr. Jervie Q. Padrones, a fellow part-time instructor of the JRMSU CAS

department, for the valuable help extended to us by aiding us with his expertise and
lending us his compilation of notes and references for this course.

We also would like to thank Mr. Ivan R. Ballares and Mr. Johnny C. Mirafuentes
for providing genuine friendship and brotherhood; To our dear CASMates, for the fun-filled
experiences; To our parents for all the support and guidance; To all our siblings, nephews
and nieces, relatives, and friends; To Bryan’s treasures, Whein Faye and Maria Jae;

All those we failed to recognize but made significant contributions and support to
the realization of this material; Above all, to the Triune God, for always filling us up with
his bountiful blessing every day especially for never leaving our side. All of this is offered
for the greater glory of your Name!

-The Authors

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Preface

Understanding the Self is one of the core courses under the new General
Education Curriculum. It tackles some of the important aspects in understanding one’s
nature and identity, knowing the different factors that contributes to and affect the
development of a person’s identity, and the different ways in effectively maintaining and
taking care of one’s identity as a person and a student.

The journey towards the completion of this work had never been easy, especially
as first timers. Honestly, there came a time when we had no idea where to begin with and
did not know, exactly, how to create an effective learning material for the students in the
absence of the instructor. However, the passion and love for teaching and helping
students to understand themselves better pushed us to pursue and bring this work to
completion. We received many encouragements and valuable help from colleagues and
friends which brought a lot of positivity towards this work’s realization. Our experiences in
teaching this subject matter and witnessing the students’ response and passion for
learning empowered our determination to finish this learning material.

This module intends to assist students in their lifelong journey by learning to accept
one’s total self and be better learners, by analyzing their habits and attitude towards their
studies, as they envision and work hard for their goals and dreams in life. Understanding
and accepting first one’s identity is a good stepping stone towards holistic growth as a
person and as the course progresses, this material will help students to go out from one’s
shells to enhance their skills and increase their capability of demonstrating proper
behavior in various situations and venues. Learning to be better learners is surely an
essential tool for students in their journey in the college/university.

In this module, there will be many learning activities that comes in the form of essay
writing. This is because we found it better to give students situational and personal
questions to answer so that they can reflect and ponder well on how they can practically
apply the lessons in their lives. These activities will also help the students to develop self-
confidence, self-esteem, and empowerment as they go along the journey towards finding
the meaning of life. This may just be a minor subject for most of the students, but if they
take this course seriously, this will give them a handful of learnings and lessons they can
bring in their quest towards achieving their dreams.

Moreover, no one understands us best except our Divine Maker so let us ask him,
who is the Almighty Creator of all beings, to help us embrace the beauty and complexity

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of and understand deeper our nature as human beings. Remember, you are created; you
are special; you are loved!

-The Authors

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Unit 3 – MANAGING AND CARING FOR THE SELF

“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I
have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others” -Parker Palmer

Welcome to the final unit of this course! Here, we will be covering some information
which will, hopefully, inspire and help us in managing and taking care of ourselves to
become a better and effective student (human being). You may proceed. Have fun!

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

• Understand theoretical underpinnings for how to manage and care for different aspects of the
self;
• Acquire and hone new skills and learnings for better managing of one’s self and behaviors; and
• Apply these new skills to one’s self and functioning for a better quality of life

Lesson 1: Learning to be a Student (Management and Strategies)

What happens during learning?

From: Michelon, P. Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain

Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, refers to the brain’s ability to change throughout life. The human
brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells
(neurons). In addition to genetic factors, the environment in which a person lives, as well as the actions
of each person, play a significant role in plasticity.

Neuroplasticity occurs in the brain…

• At the beginning of life: when the immature brain organizes itself.

• In case of brain injury: to compensate for lost functions or maximize remaining functions.
• Through adulthood: whenever something new is learned and memorized

Plasticity, learning and memory

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For a long time, it was believed that as we aged, the connections in the brain became fixed, and then
simply faded. Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity
is the capacity of the brain to change with learning.
Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of connections between neurons: New
connections form and the internal structure of the existing synapses change.
Draganski and colleagues recently showed that extensive learning of abstract information can also
trigger some plastic changes in the brain. They imaged the brains of German medical students 3 months
before their medical exam and right after the exam and compared them to brains of students who were
not studying for exam at this time. Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions
of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to
be involved in memory retrieval and learning.

Metacognition and study strategies

Psychologists have been developing and evaluating the efficacy of techniques for study and instruction
for more than 100 years. Nevertheless, some effective techniques are underutilized … many students
do not use them, despite evidence suggesting that the techniques could benefit student achievement
with little added effort. Also, some learning techniques that are popular and often used by students are
relatively ineffective. (see table below for list)

I. ELABORATIVE INTERROGATION
The key to elaborative interrogation involves prompting learners to generate an explanation for an
explicitly stated fact. The prevailing theoretical account of elaborative-interrogation effects is that
elaborative interrogation enhances learning by supporting the integration of new information with
existing prior knowledge.
We rate elaborative interrogation as having moderate utility.

II. SELF-EXPLANATION
The core component of self-explanation involves having students explain some aspect of their
processing during learning. Consistent with basic theoretical assumptions about the related technique
of elaborative interrogation, self-explanation may enhance learning by supporting the integration of new
information with existing prior knowledge.
We rate self-explanation as having moderate utility.

III. SUMMARIZATION
Students often have to learn large amounts of information, which requires them to identify what is
important and how different ideas connect to one another. One popular technique for accomplishing
these goals involves having students write summaries of to-be-learned texts. Successful summaries
identify the main points of a text and capture the gist of it while excluding unimportant or repetitive
material (A. L. Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981).

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Higher-quality summaries that contained more information and that were linked to prior knowledge
were associated with better performance. More than just facilitating the extraction of meaning, however,
Summarization should also boost organizational processing, given that extracting the gist of a text
requires learners to connect disparate pieces of the text, as opposed to simply evaluating its individual
components.
Thus, writing about the important points in one’s own words produced a benefit over and above that
of selecting important information; students benefited from the more active processing involved in
summarization and notetaking (see Wittrock, 1990, and Chi, 2009, for reviews of active/generative
learning).

IV. HIGHLIGHTING AND UNDERLINING

The techniques typically appeal to students because they are simple to use, do not entail training, and
do not require students to invest much time beyond what is already required for reading the material.
The question we ask here is, will a technique that is so easy to use actually help students learn?
Within the active-highlighting group, performance was better on test items for which the relevant text
had been highlighted (see Blanchard & Mikkelson, 1987; L. L. Johnson, 1988 for similar results). This
benefit to highlighted information was greater for the active highlighters (who selected what to highlight)
than for passive highlighters (who saw the same information highlighted, but did not select it). This
benefit to highlighted information was accompanied by a small cost on test questions probing information
that had not been highlighted.
A number of studies have shown that reading marked text promotes later memory for the marked
material: Students are more likely to remember things that the experimenter highlighted or underlined in
the text (e.g., Cashen & Leicht, 1970; Crouse & Idstein, 1972; Hartley, Bartlett, & Branthwaite, 1980;
Klare, Mabry, & Gustafson, 1955; see Lorch, 1989 for a review).
Actively selecting information should benefit memory more than simply reading marked text (given that
the former would capitalize on the benefits of generation, Slamecka & Graf, 1978, and active processing
more generally, Faw & Waller, 1976). Marked text draws the reader’s attention, but additional processing
should be required if the reader has to decide which material is most important. Such decisions require
the reader to think about the meaning of the text and how its different pieces relate to one another (i.e.,
organizational processing; Hunt & Worthen, 2006).
Marking too much text is likely to have multiple consequences. Overmarking reduces the degree to
which marked text is distinguished from other text, and people are less likely to remember marked text
if it is not distinctive (Lorch, Lorch, & Klusewitz, 1995)
On the basis of the available evidence, we rate highlighting and underlining as having low utility.

V. THE KEYWORD MNEMONIC

The potential benefits of the keyword mnemonic have been extensively explored, and its power partly
resides in the use of interactive images. In particular, the interactive image involves elaboration that

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integrates the words meaningfully, and the images themselves should help to distinguish the sought-
after translation from other candidates.
The benefits of the keyword mnemonic generalize to many different kinds of material: (a) foreign-
language vocabulary from a variety of languages (French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish, and
Tagalog); (b) the definitions of obscure English vocabulary words and science terms; (c) statecapital
associations (e.g., Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska); (d) medical terminology; (e) people’s names and
accomplishments or occupations; and (f) minerals and their attributes (e.g., the mineral wolframite is
soft, dark in color, and used in the home).
On the basis of the literature reviewed above, we rate the keyword mnemonic as low utility.

VI. IMAGERY USE FOR TEXT LEARNING

A variety of mechanisms may contribute to the benefits of imaging text material on later test
performance. Developing images can enhance one’s mental organization or integration of information
in the text, and idiosyncratic images of particular referents in the text could enhance learning as well (cf.
distinctive processing; Hunt, 2006). Moreover, using one’s prior knowledge to generate a coherent
representation of a narrative may enhance a student’s general understanding of the text; if so, the
influence of imagery use may be robust across criterion tasks that tap memory and comprehension.
Imagery can improve students’ learning of text materials, and the promising work by Leutner et al.
(2009) speaks to the potential utility of imagery use for text learning.

VII. REREADING
According to the quantitative hypothesis, rereading simply increases the total amount of information
encoded, regardless of the kind or level of information within the text. In contrast, the qualitative
hypothesis assumes that rereading differentially affects the processing of higher-level and lower-level
information within a text, with particular emphasis placed on the conceptual organization and processing
of main ideas during rereading.
Based on the available evidence, we rate rereading as having low utility.

VIII. PRACTICE TESTING

Theoretical accounts are increasingly emerging to explain two different kinds of testing effects, which
are referred to as direct effects and mediated effects of testing (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a). Direct
effects refer to changes in learning that arise from the act of taking a test itself, whereas mediated effects
refer to changes in learning that arise from an influence of testing on the amount or kind of encoding
that takes place after the test (e.g., during a subsequent restudy opportunity).
On the basis of the evidence described above, we rate practice testing as having high utility.

IX. DISTRIBUTED PRACTICE

Many theories of distributed-practice effects have been proposed and tested. One theory invokes the
idea of deficient processing, arguing that the processing of material during a second learning opportunity
suffers when it is close in time to the original learning episode. Basically, students do not have to work
very hard to reread notes or retrieve something from memory when they have just completed this same

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activity, and furthermore, they may be misled by the ease of this second task and think they know the
material better than they really do (e.g., Bahrick & Hall, 2005).
On the basis of the available evidence, we rate distributed practice as having high utility: It works
across students of different ages, with a wide variety of materials, on the majority of standard laboratory
measures, and over long delays.

X. INTERLEAVED PRACTICE
One explanation for this impressive effect is that interleaving gave students practice at identifying
which solution method (i.e., which of several different formulas) should be used for a given solid (see
also, Mayfield & Chase, 2002). Put differently, interleaved practice helps students to discriminate
between the different kinds of problems so that they will be more likely to use the correct solution method
for each one.
Not only is the result from Mayfield and Chase (2002) promising, their procedure offers a tactic for
the implementation of interleaved practice, both by teachers in the classroom and by students regulating
their study (for a detailed discussion of implementation, see Rohrer, 2009).

Managing your own learning: Self-regulated learning

In an era of constant distractions in the form of portable phones, …computers, and televisions for even
young children, it is hardly surprising to discover that many students have not learned to self-regulate
their academic studying very well.
[Educators] have wrestled with the presence of substantial differences in individual students'
backgrounds and modes of learning. Some students grasped important concepts easily and seemed

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highly motivated to study, whereas others struggled to understand and retain information and often
seemed disinterested.
In the 19th century, learning was viewed as a formal discipline, and a student's failure to learn was
widely attributed to personal limitations in intelligence or diligence. Students were expected to overcome
their individual limitations in order to profit from the curriculum of the school. Conceptions of self-
regulatory development at the time were limited to acquiring desirable personal habits, such as proper
diction and handwriting.
At the dawn of the 20th century, diverse reformers, such as John Dewey, E.L. Thorndike, Maria
Montessori, and the progressive educators, suggested various ways to alter the curriculum to
accommodate students' individual differences, such as grouping of students homogeneously according
to age or ability, introducing perceptual-motor learning tasks, and broadening course work to include
training in practical skills.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new perspective on students' individual differences began to
emerge from research on metacognition and social cognition. Metacognition is defined as the awareness
of and knowledge about one's own thinking.
Students' deficiencies in learning were attributed to a lack of metacognitive awareness of personal
limitations and an inability to compensate.
Students were asked to set particular types of goals for themselves, such as completing of a certain
number of math homework problems, and to self-record their effectiveness in achieving these goals.
Students who set specific and proximal goals for themselves displayed superior achievement and
perceptions of personal efficacy. Interestingly, simply asking students to self-record some aspect of their
learning, such as the completion of assignments, often led to "spontaneous" improvements in functioning
(Shapiro, 1984). These effects, termed reactivity in the scientific literature, implied that students'
metacognitive (i.e., self) awareness of particular aspects of their functioning could enhance their self-
control. Of course, self-awareness is often insufficient when a learner lacks fundamental skills, but it can
produce a readiness that is essential for personal change (Zimmerman, 2001).
This perspective focused instead on what students needed to know about themselves in order to
manage their limitations during efforts to learn, such as a dyslexic student's knowing to use a particular
strategy to read.
Although teachers also need to know a student's strengths and limitations in learning, their goal should
be to empower their students to become self-aware of these differences. If a student fails to understand
some aspect of a lesson in class, he or she must possess the self-awareness and strategic knowledge
to take corrective action.

SELF-REGULATED LEARNING

Self-regulation is not a mental ability or an academic performance skill; rather it is the self-directive
process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills. Learning is viewed as an
activity that students do for themselves in a proactive way rather than as a covert event that happens
to them in reaction to teaching.

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These learners are proactive in their efforts to learn because they are aware of their strengths and
limitations and because they are guided by personally set goals and task-related strategies, such as
using an arithmetic addition strategy to check the accuracy of solutions to subtraction problems.
These learners monitor their behavior in terms of their goals and self-reflect on their increasing
effectiveness. This enhances their self-satisfaction and motivation to continue to improve their methods
of learning.
Self-regulation is important because a major function of education is the development of lifelong
learning skills.
Self-regulation in learning involves the selective use of specific processes that must be personally
adapted to each learning task. The component skills include:
a. Setting specific proximal goals for oneself,
b. adopting powerful strategies for attaining the goals,
c. monitoring one's performance selectively for signs of progress,
d. restructuring one's physical and social context to make it compatible with one's goals,
e. managing one's time use efficiently,
f. self-evaluating one's methods,
g. attributing causation to results, and
h. adapting future methods.

A students' level of learning has been found to vary based on the presence or absence of these key
self-regulatory processes (Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994; 1998).

Structure and Function of Self-Regulatory Processes

Social learning psychologists view the structure of self-regulatory processes in terms of three cyclical
phases. The forethought phase refers to processes and beliefs that occur before efforts to learn; the
performance phase refers to processes that occur during behavioral implementation, and self-
reflection refers to processes that occur after each learning effort.

Forethought phase
There are two major classes of forethought phase processes: task analysis and self-motivation. Task
analysis involves goal setting and strategic planning. There is considerable evidence of increased
academic success by learners who set specific proximal goals for themselves, such as memorizing
a word list for a spelling test, and by learners who plan to use spelling strategies, such as segmenting
words into syllables.
Self-motivation stems from students' beliefs about learning, such as self-efficacy beliefs about having
the personal capability to learn and outcome expectations about personal consequences of learning
(Bandura, 1997). Intrinsic interest refers to the students' valuing of the task skill for its own merits, and
learning goal orientation refers to valuing the process of learning for its own merits.

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Performance phase
Performance phase processes fall into two major classes: self-control and self-observation. Self-
control refers to the deployment of specific methods or strategies that were selected during the
forethought phase.
Among the key types of self-control methods that have been studied to date are the use of imagery,
self-instruction, attention focusing, and task strategies. For example, in learning the Spanish word pan
for "bread," an English-speaking girl could form an image of a bread pan or self-instruct using the phrase
"bread pan." She could also locate her place of study away from distracting noises so she could control
her attention better. For a task-strategy, she could group the Spanish word pan with associated words
for foods.
Self-observation refers to self-recording personal events or self-experimentation to find out the cause
of these events. For example, students are often asked to self-record their time use to make them
aware of how much time they spend studying. A boy may notice that when he studied alone, he finished
his homework more quickly than when studying with a friend. To test this hypothesis, the boy could
conduct a self-experiment in which he studied parallel lessons alone and in the presence of his friend
to see whether his friend was an asset or a liability.

Self-reflection phase
There are two major classes of self-reflection phase processes: self-judgment and self-reaction.
One form of self-judgment, self-evaluation, refers to comparisons of self-observed performances
against some standard, such as one's prior performance, another person's performance, or an absolute
standard of performance. Another form of self-judgment involves causal attribution, which refers to
beliefs about the cause of one's errors or successes, such as a score on a mathematics test. One form
of self-reaction involves feelings of self-satisfaction and positive affect regarding one's performance.
Increases in self-satisfaction enhance motivation, whereas decreases in self-satisfaction undermine
further efforts to learn (Schunk, 2001). Self-reactions also take the form of adaptive/ defensive
responses. Defensive reactions refer to efforts to protect one's self-image by withdrawing or avoiding
opportunities to learn and perform, such as dropping a course or being absent for a test. In contrast,
adaptive reactions refer to adjustments designed to increase the effectiveness of one's method of
learning, such as discarding or modifying an ineffective learning strategy.

Self-regulated students seek out help from others to improve their learning. What defines them as
"self-regulated" is not their reliance on socially isolated methods of learning, but rather their personal
initiative, perseverance, and adoptive skill. Self-regulated students focus on how they activate, alter, and
sustain specific learning practices in social as well as solitary contexts. In an era when these essential
qualities for lifelong learning are distressingly absent in many students, teaching self-regulated learning
processes is especially relevant.

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Lesson 2: Setting Goals for Success (Management and Strategies)

From: Locke, E. (2002). Setting Goals for Life and Happiness.

Locke, in his article “Setting Goals for Life and Happiness” begins with the premise that one’s highest
moral purpose is the achievement of one’s own happiness. He said, to achieve happiness, individuals
must understand their own natures, and especially their needs.
Locke’s motivational sequence is illustrated in this page. To summarize, the sequence is as follows:
Needs give rise to the necessity to choose and pursue values; value achievement necessitates the
setting and pursuit of goals. From the other direction: Goals attain values, and values fulfill needs. The
role of emotions is that of an impetus to action; they provide psychological and physical fuel. They serve
(as does the pleasure-pain mechanism at the bodily or sensory level) as a reward for successful action
and an inducement to avoid actions that cause pain or suffering. Without emotions, values would be
experienced as dry, abstract, and intellectual.

Needs
All living organisms have needs. A need is an objective requirement of a living organism’s survival and
well-being. People have to conceptually identify their needs and discover, through thinking and research,
how to satisfy them.
As I noted previously, people discover their needs, how to satisfy them, and how to anticipate them
through reason (thinking).

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Values
It is now necessary to distinguish needs from values. Needs as such are inborn; they are part of an
organism’s nature. Values are acquired, that is, learned (Rokeach, 1972). Needs exist even if one is not
aware of them; values exist in consciousness (or the subconscious). A value is “that which one acts to
gain and/or keep” (Rand, 1964, p. 16).
Unlike the case of needs, people do need a value hierarchy because without one they would be unable
to make choices. It is values that prioritize needs. If a person valued everything equally, at a given
moment, all action would be paralyzed. Furthermore, a person with no value hierarchy would be unable
to take any purposeful, long-range actions.

Emotions
Emotions are the form in which people experience automatized, subconscious value judgments
(Lazarus, 1991; Locke, 1969). Emotions reflect subconscious knowledge and also one’s subconsciously
held values and value hierarchy.
Every emotion reflects a particular type of value appraisal. Fear is the response to physical threat,
anxiety to an uncertain threat or a self-esteem threat, guilt to the breach of a moral value, satisfaction to
value achievement, anger to another person doing something he should not have done, jealousy to
another person having a value one wants for oneself, and so forth (Lazarus, 1991; Lazarus & Lazarus,
1994). The intensity of an emotion reflects the degree of subconsciously perceived value threat or value
achievement, as well as the importance of the value in one’s value hierarchy.
Through reason people have the power to identify their emotions, to understand the causes of these
emotions, and to choose appropriate courses of action (including the choice of no action).

Goals
Goals and values are similar concepts. Goals as the specific form of values; they are values applied
to specific circumstances. Just as needs are fulfilled by pursuing values, values are achieved by
pursuing goals. For example, if a person values education, the way to achieve it is to set and pursue
specific educational goals—such as applying to college, signing up for courses, doing the assignments,
getting the needed grades in each course, and accumulating the required number of credits to graduate.

The Importance of Goals

One cannot attain happiness by living solely in a world of fantasy; one must act to bring one’s vision
into reality, into concrete, perceivable form. To quote Ayn Rand, “Happiness is that state of
consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values” (1964, p. 31). The achievement
of values requires the achievement of the requisite goals.
One’s goals and values, however, must be consonant with one’s needs, or they will result in self-
destruction. There are many potential sources of pleasure in life (e.g., work, love, friendship, family and
children, food and drink, art—novels, painting, sculpture, movies, TV, ballet, opera, concerts— sports
and recreation, hobbies).

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LOCKE’S GOAL SETTING THEORY

Goals determine the direction, intensity, and duration of action. They also affect cognitive processing
and the use of task knowledge.

Difficulty. Given that people are committed to a goal, they exert effort in proportion to what the goal
requires. So an easy goal stimulates low effort, a medium goal, moderate effort, and a difficult goal, high
effort.
Specificity. Specific goals regulate action more reliably than do vague goals (see also McDermott &
Snyder, 2000). Asking a person to “do his best” on a task does not lead him to do his best because such
a vague goal leads people to define “best” in subjective terms. Asking someone to “increase sales” can
be interpreted by one person as a 1% increase, by another as a 5% increase, and by another as a 15%
increase.
The highest task performance is attained when performance goals are both specific and difficult.
Feedback. To keep track of goal progress, people need performance feedback (i.e., knowledge of
results). When the feedback shows them to be on schedule for goal success, they tend to sustain the
same pace of work and the same strategy. When feedback shows them to be lagging, they tend to
increase their efforts (if self-efficacy does not drop—see subsequent comment).
In order to evaluate their performances, people need standards against which to judge it; without such
standards, they cannot distinguish good from poor performance and therefore have no motivation to
change their direction or level of effort.

Commitment. For goals to be effective, people must be committed to them. This is especially critical
when goals are difficult and thus require considerable thinking and effort. Action is the ultimate proof of
commitment in that people can say they are committed and not really mean it.
Two types of causal factors are critical in commitment: the belief that the goal is important and the
belief that one can achieve or make progress toward it. For a goal to be important, it must be tied to an
important value. The belief that one can achieve or make progress toward a goal is critical because it is
hard to be motivated to try for something that is perceived as unattainable (see Brehm, Wright, Soloman,
Silka, & Greenberg [1983] for a similar view). This brings us to the concept of self-efficacy (see Maddux,
this volume).

Task Knowledge. Goals automatically arouse task knowledge and skills if they are perceived
consciously or subconsciously as relevant to task or goal accomplishment. Goals increase the likelihood
that people will use the knowledge they have, especially when the goals are difficult, because not using
it may prevent goal achievement. When a series of actions has to be consciously laid out, we call them
plans. These, along with the use of already existing skills and knowledge, constitute the means to the
goal. Acquiring the requisite knowledge to reach the end goal can be viewed as a subgoal.

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BANDURA’S Self-Efficacy
This concept from social-cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1997) refers to task-specific self-
confidence. Bandura has shown that self-efficacy has important motivational effects in many domains
of life, including work performance and career choice, education, physical and mental health, and sports.
Self-efficacy plays an important role in goal setting. People with higher self-efficacy set more difficult
goals for themselves, are more likely to be committed to difficult goals that are assigned, are more likely
to sustain their efforts after negative feedback, and are more likely to discover successful task strategies
than people with lower self-efficacy. Bandura notes that the main ways to build efficacy are through
enactive mastery (training and practice), role modeling (observing others), and persuasion.

Happiness in Work and Love

For Locke there are two sources of happiness: work and romantic love. He chose work because it fills
the majority of most people’s daily lives and because productive work is critical to one’s survival (see
Turner, Barling, & Zacharatos, this volume).

Happiness: Goal-setting in Work

Some people truly resent the need to work. Resenting the responsibility of earning a living is
tantamount to the resentment of reality, that is, one’s own nature and needs as a living being. People
who resent this responsibility will be hard-pressed to find happiness in work or anywhere else. Success
in work, as in life, requires continual effort, including the consistent use of volition, that is, of one’s
capacity to think.

Applying the principles: Ideally one wants to enjoy work and to make a good living at it.
- Generally, the more skills and credentials one has (assuming they are relevant to the market), the
more options one has to choose from among the available jobs, and the more one will get paid when
employed.
- The first goal in preparation for work should be to acquire marketable skills, starting with a basic
education.
- Effort. Even people with great natural ability need to work hard if they are to attain their full potential.
- The next goal should be to find a job that matches one’s skills (and/or allows for skill development)
and that matches one’s values. It is particularly important to find a job that involves work that one enjoys.
- The ideal job is one where a person can say, “I can’t believe they pay me to do something that is this
much fun.” Of course, not everyone can find such a job, but looking for it is usually well worth the effort.
- Someone people do not know what they like because they have not had enough work experience.
So the goal should be to try different tasks, positions, and jobs until one finds something truly enjoyable.
- The next goal should be to constantly increase one’s knowledge and skill on the job. As one, very
successful, person I know told me, “Every job I got, I set a goal to do it better than anyone else had done
it before.” If one fails to grow on the job, the job gradually becomes less enjoyable and also makes one
more susceptible to being laid off.

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- It is critical to consider one’s own personal context when looking for a job, planning a career, and
setting performance goals. People differ, of course, in their ability and in how much they value ambition.
- Asking a boss or colleagues for suggestions on how to improve skills can help change one’s
perspective from a failure frame to a learning frame. Failure should be viewed as diagnostic of one’s
current skill and effort level rather than as proof of one’s fundamental inadequacy (Snyder, 1994). Self-
efficacy can be kept high by focusing on the things one can do, including the steps that can be taken to
acquire new skills or find a new job.

Happiness: Goal-setting in Love

Goals for Oneself

If one’s goal and value is to establish a successful romantic relationship, then the next goal should be
to make oneself lovable. Making oneself lovable does not mean making oneself a selfless mirror of the
other person’s wants. To quote Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, “To say ‘I love you’ one must know
first how to say the ‘I’ ” (Rand, 1952, p. 376).
To have an “I” worth loving, one needs to acquire virtues. One cannot expect to be loved without
cause.
What virtues make one lovable? I would submit they are the same ones that make one fit to live
successfully. Ayn Rand (1957) suggests the following:
• rationality: taking reality and reason seriously;
• independence: accepting the responsibility of using one’s own judgment and earning one’s own
living;
• honesty: refusing to fake reality (see Locke & Woiceshyn, 1996);
• integrity: acting on one’s rational convictions;
• productivity: producing the material values one’s survival requires;
• justice: judging other people in accordance with the facts; and
• pride: seeking one’s own moral perfection.

To this list one might add purpose: having a direction for one’s life; passion: having strong values
that are experienced emotionally (but not irrationally); maturity: being able to hold an adult context
despite the emotions of the moment; and manners: respect for and politeness toward others.
Knowing how to value. Valuing another person means deeply and selfishly caring for them— because
one regards that person as an important value. To love another person is to personally care deeply
about that person’s welfare. It is to value that person’s self, character, values, goals and aspirations,
ideas, feelings, looks. It is to find pleasure in the person’s being and company, in the things you share
and do together. Narcissists do not make good lovers because they simply cannot value anyone but
themselves

Goals for the Partner

It is a truism that people are attracted to people like themselves to the degree that people possess
traits that make them lovable, their goal usually will be to find these same qualities in their partners.

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These traits would include:

• Self-esteem (Locke et al., 1996): if one party looks down on the other or feels inadequate to the
other, a true partnership is impossible; of course, if both parties have low self-esteem there is trouble,
• Intelligence and education: people have to be able to communicate on the same wavelength;
• Age: there is some flexibility here, but enormous age differences are difficult because of
differences in health, energy levels, and interests;
• Growth rate: as noted earlier, ideally couples will grow together at the same rate; and
• Philosophical (including religious) values: it is difficult for people with very different value systems
and interests to live in harmony; it is not impossible, but it is critical in such cases to have a bond with
respect to some core values that are strong enough to override any differences.

Blocks to Goal Achievement

Most people, at some level, seem to know this. Why, then, are so many people unhappy? Three
reasons, Locke thinks, are primary:
• The most fundamental reason is irrationalism; this characteristically consists of putting one’s
wishes ahead of reality, for example, holding an image of a person that is based on what you want him
to be, not on what he is.
• A second reason is the unwillingness to put forth mental (and physical) effort—both in work
and in love. Living successfully requires hard thinking followed by action, and many people do not want
to bother.
• The third reason is fear. The older I get, the more I come to realize how big a role fear plays in
many people’s lives: fear of change, fear of telling the truth, fear of being wrong, fear of being different,
fear of thinking for oneself, fear of failure, fear of the subconscious and of knowing one’s own motives,
fear of disappointment, fear of disapproval, fear of being hurt, fear of being vulnerable, fear of the new,
and fear of standing up for one’s values.

Those who live only to avoid hurt are the living dead. The essence of life is goal directed action,
which entails a process of value choice, value pursuit, and value achievement. When the striving for
values stops, life indeed loses all meaning.

Lesson 3: Taking Charge of One’s Health (Stress, Coping and Self-care)

Stress and Filipinos: The social and cultural dimensions of stress
From: Tan, M. Stress and the Filipino - http://pcij.org/stories/stress - and-the-filipino/

How do we say we’re stressed in Filipino?

We don’t. Well, at least not in a way that we would in English: I am stressed. It just doesn’t work out;
we don’t have a word in any of our Philippine languages for stress and being stressed. But that doesn’t

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mean we Filipinos don’t ever experience stress. We feel it all the time and we see it producing illnesses,
both physical and mental, both fleeting (as in having to run to the toilet) and serious, life-threatening
ones. Because stress affects the body’s immune system, we can say all ailments are in one way or
another stress-related, from asthma to singaw (canker sores), to cardiovascular ailments and even
infectious diseases. There’s also a tendency to dismiss stress-related illnesses as “psychological,” and
that these are self-limiting, easily resolved. The fact is that stress can so overwhelm people that they
lapse into depression, resorting to destructive behavior, directed toward the self, or toward others.

Not enough’s being done to understanding stress in its local context, yet stress is mediated through
culture: from the very nature of the stressors, to the ways we respond to the stress. Understanding this
local context might help us develop more culturally appropriate, and therefore more effective, ways to
deal with stress.

Stressors. - are not universal. For example, we say “noise” is stressful, but what exactly is noise?
Culturally, we have different thresholds for these sounds. [People] born and bred in Canada, [may] find
the Philippines too “noisy”: the jeepneys, the arcade games in malls, even the way people talk. Yet they
have no problems tuning into hard rock music on their iPods.
[Some people] find crowds stressful; yet a Filipino sees a crowd and is delighted, “Uy, masaya.”
Westerners crave privacy; the Filipino is stressed by solitude. We’re not alone, of course, in finding
pleasure in crowds and camaraderie. Culture adapts to circumstances and we are only one of many
countries with large dense populations that have learned to live with the maddening crowds, complete
with the noise. The Chinese, for example, refer to “merriment” as re nao, the words for “hot” and “noisy.”
While we enjoy noise, we’re quite sensitive to olfactory assaults. Filipinos will claim some odors are
so bad they cause a stomachache. We sniff everything, from food to lovers, and the smells we find good,
we tend to indulge to an excess. No wonder aromatherapy’s taken off in the Philippines, as did those
terrible car fresheners and deodorizers.
Rural or urban, we all face the stresses of family, perhaps more so than in Western countries. We like
to say we are family-oriented, with relatives always on hand to help out. But the extended Filipino family
can be stressful too, with all its obligations. Overseas workers have a particularly difficult time with all
the expectations family members have back home.

Responses. OH, BUT the Filipino is resilient, we keep hearing. I’ve been in urban shanties where 15
people share 15 square meters of living space and yes, on the surface, everyone seems happy. Chinese
Asiaweek once had a cover story featuring Filipinos as the happiest people in the world, unfazed by the
most difficult of circumstances. One photo had a group of men drinking away in the middle of knee-high
floodwaters.
But the scenes of smiling and laughing Filipinos, singing and dancing (and drinking) away can be
deceptive. Quite often, we deal with stress by trying to be “happy.” I put that in quotes because the
Filipino term is masaya, which is really more of an externalized merriment. Masaya is social
camaraderie, it’s making cheer and quite often we do it precisely because there have been unhappy

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events, stressful events. The best example is that of a death — our wakes are notorious for its merry-
making, but that, precisely, is part of our stress-coping mechanism.
We have folk psychology, maybe even folk psychiatry, at work here, Filipinos aware of how dangerous
it is to allow stress to consume us. We warn people about excesses as a cause of illness, and that
includes the excessive emotions generated by stress. The word dalamhati is graphic, describing an
inner sadness (from the Malay dalam, inside and hati, the heart or the liver, believed to be seats of our
emotions) that slowly consumes the person.
But for all the talk about our communitarian orientation, of helping friends to overcome stress, social
pressures in the Philippines can also be counterproductive with the way we sometimes force people to
repress the stress. “Enjoy!” we urge them, not realizing there are limits to resilience.
There are power dimensions to all this, such as those found in gender. Contrary to stereotypes about
women being more expressive, Filipinas are actually more prone to dealing with stressful situations
through tiis (endurance) and kimkim (repression). Check out the local scenes of merriment: it’s usually
men having a good time, bringing out the beer and toasting their problems away, while their women look
for ways to make ends meet.
Men, too, are expected to keep their feelings in check, but more out of masculine values of strength
and stoicism. Men are generally not allowed to cry, much less to go into hysterics; and this probably
helps to explain why more men suffer from cardiovascular disease.
Many Filipinos will express their stress by complaining about recurring headaches, or abdominal pains,
accompanied by dizziness, nausea, fatigue. Doctors used to dismiss these as being all in the mind, but
it has become clear the physical pain and distress may be quite real, that the pent-up stress is expressed
through the body.
These vague symptoms have been labeled as “somatization syndrome,” and are often hard to treat,
partly because medical professionals still haven’t figured out the biological processes involved.
Culturally, too, people may attach labels that don’t quite reflect the actual part of the body that’s affected,
as when they say that they’re suffering from nerbyos or “nerves.” Nerbyos doesn’t necessarily mean
being nervous; it’s often hypertension or high blood pressure, for example, and a health professional or
caregiver may miss the problem.
Then, too, there’s the intriguing bangungot, those sudden deaths, usually at night, associated with
nightmares. The term itself is derived from bangon, to rise, and ungol, to moan. Young healthy men, like
the late actor Rico Yan, die mysteriously and the diagnosis is immediate: bangungot. The medical world
remains stumped, attributing the deaths to everything, from pancreatitis to congenital defects in the
heart, but too little has been done to explore the stress angle. Similar “culture-bound” illnesses are found
also in other neighboring countries and the deaths tend to be reported in international medical journals
because they often occur in people who are away from home. The first cases reported in U.S. medical
literature involved Filipinos in the U.S. Navy. In recent years, medical reports have included Thai men
doing construction work in Singapore, and Indochinese refugees who have just relocated to the United
States.
I wouldn’t be surprised if bangungot is reported as well among our 8.5 million overseas Filipinos. The
Filipino is so attached to home and hearth that we even have a term namamahay, missing home, to
describe a range of symptoms, from insomnia to constipation that plagues us when we are away from

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home. That’s stress too. And with men, given the cultural imperative of suppressing their distress, we
might expect nightmares, some with fatal endings.

Sources of coping and strength

[The author] think we’re already in that epidemic, and too little is being done to help Filipinos tackle
stress.
[The author has] intentionally used the verb “tackle” rather than “treat” because there is a tendency to
medicalize stress, to look for drug treatments that could lead to new dependencies. The drug companies
push all kinds of “antidepressants” to doctors, who are then quick to prescribe them to stressed patients.
Sessions with psychiatrists or psychologists are more effective than drug treatments, but again, low
incomes may prevent many Filipinos from getting the “talking therapy” they need. That is why we need
to be able to tap what we already have in culture, looking into how families and communities can be
mobilized to help people with their stress.
I feel community health workers are under-utilized for mental health. Given some training, they can
learn to help their barangay residents with stress. That includes essentials about counseling, for
example, not resorting to that notorious sulsol (“Oh yes, your husband is really terrible, and mare, you
know I just didn’t want to tell you but we’ve all known all this time that. . .”)
In the United States, studies are showing that somatization syndrome is best handled with what’s
called cognitive restructuring, helping patients to take on new lenses as they revisit their problems.
Instead of wallowing in self-pity as a victim, cognitive restructuring helps people regain some sense of
control.
We have that in our folk therapies — note how, in bangungot, we’re supposed to try to move a finger,
a toe, any part of the body. It’s not a symbolic act; it actually means taking control of one’s own body,
and the failing spirit. It’s a powerful metaphor that can be used to explain other stress-related ailments
and syndromes.
[The author is] ambivalent about New Age therapies such as meditation and aromatherapy, but mainly
because the type offered by spas and health resorts are just totally inappropriate. Since we’re a very
olfactory people, I think there is a place for aromatherapy. Sadly, we’re importing expensive aromatic
oils when there are local plants that can be used; in fact, some of the most expensive aromatic oils are
extracted from local plants we take for granted, like ylang-ylang.
[The author sees] a place for many traditional therapies being rechanneled toward stress
management. The manghihilot can be “reinvented” so his or her skills with therapeutic massage can be
applied not just for sprains, but also for broken hearts and weary spirits.
Massage and aromatherapy, however, are only the externals. Stress management is really helping
people to dissect their own feelings, to understand where their distress is coming from. The solutions
may not always be easy — all the aromatherapy and meditation in the world will not raise low wages.
But community action can help to make the stress more tolerable. Communities should be urged to
create their own safe spaces where people can seek some refuge. Filipino-style, such spaces need not

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be totally quiet, but they do need to give some sense of safety, of sanity in a mad world. Filipino-style,
too, we need to think of how these therapeutic spaces might work out as places where people can
engage in social activities, without becoming more agitated. Alternatives could be offered: gardening,
cross-stitching, bingo…anything that calms the mind. You don’t need to be in the lotus position to
meditate.
Ultimately, stress management is a matter of helping people to recognize that the world, which seems
so stressful, can also be a source of joy and pleasure, fulfillment and renewal. The therapies being
dangled around are really meant as appetizers, ways of inducing the depressed the person to garner
enough strength and courage to re-engage not just the world, but life itself.

From an article in the PDI: Michael L. Tan is a medical anthropologist. He is currently chair of the
anthropology at UP Diliman, Quezon City. He also writes an op-ed column, “Pinoy Kasi,” for the
Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Taking care of the self: The need for self-care and compassion
From: Neff, K. (2012). The Science of Self Compassion

To understand what is meant by the term self-compassion, it is useful to first consider what it means
to feel compassion more generally. When we experience compassion, we notice and are moved by the
suffering of others.
Compassion… presupposes the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. It entails feelings of
kindness, care, and understanding for people who are in pain, so that the desire to ameliorate suffering
naturally emerges. Finally, compassion involves recognizing the shared human condition, fragile and
imperfect as it is.
Self-compassion has exactly the same qualities—it’s just compassion turned inward.

What’s Self-Compassion?
Drawing on the writings of various Buddhist teachers (e.g., Bennett-Goleman, 2001; Brach, 2003;
Goldstein & Kornfield, 1987; Salzberg, 1997), [Neff has] defined self-compassion as being composed of
three main components: self-kindness, a sense of common humanity, and mindfulness (Neff,
2003b).

Self-kindness. Self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we
suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. It recognizes that
being imperfect and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so we soothe and nurture ourselves when
confronting our pain rather than getting angry when life falls short of our ideals.
We clearly acknowledge our problems and shortcomings without judgment, so we can do what’s
necessary to help ourselves. We can’t always get what we want. We can’t always be who we want to
be. When this reality is denied or resisted, suffering arises in the form of stress, frustration, and self-

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criticism. When this reality is accepted with benevolence, however, we generate positive emotions of
kindness and care that help us cope.

Common Humanity. One of the biggest problems with harsh self-judgment is that it tends to make us
feel isolated. When we notice something about ourselves we don’t like, we irrationally feel like everyone
else is perfect and it’s only me who is inadequate. This isn’t a logical process, but a kind of distorted
self-centeredness: focusing on our inadequacies gives us tunnel vision so that we can’t see anything
else but our own feeble, worthless self. Similarly, when things go wrong in our external lives, we feel
that somehow other people are having an easier time of it, that our own situation is abnormal or unfair.
When our experiences are interpreted from the perspective of a separate self, we have trouble
remembering the similar experiences of our fellow humans (like the dying 84 year-old man whose final
words were “why me?”) Self-compassion recognizes that life challenges and personal failures are part
of being human, an experience we all share. In this way, it helps us to feel less desolate and isolated
when we are in pain.

Mindfulness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind-state in which thoughts and feelings are
observed as they are, without suppressing or denying them (see Chapter 2). You can’t ignore your pain
and feel compassion for it at the same time. Of course, you may think that suffering is blindingly obvious.
But how many of us, when we look in a mirror and don’t like what see, remember that this a moment of
suffering worthy of a compassionate response? Similarly, when life goes awry, we often go into problem-
solving mode immediately without recognizing the need to comfort ourselves for the difficulties we’re
facing.
Conversely, mindfulness requires that we not be overly identified with negative thoughts or feelings,
so that we are caught up and swept away by our aversive reactions (Bishop et al., 2004). This type of
rumination narrows our focus and exaggerates implications for self-worth (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). The
mental space provided by taking a mindful approach to our difficult feelings, however, allows for greater
clarity, perspective, and emotional equanimity (Baer, 2003; Shapiro, Carlson, Astin, & Freedman, 2006).

Self-Compassion Phrases

When you’re feeling stress or emotional pain— perhaps you are caught in a traffic jam, are arguing
with a loved one, or are feeling inadequate in some way— it’s helpful to have a set of phrases memorized
to help you remember to be more compassionate to yourself in the moment.
You can take a deep breath, put your hand over your heart, or gently hug yourself (if you feel
comfortable doing so), and repeat the following phrases:

This is a moment of suffering

Suffering is a part of life

May I be kind to myself

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May I give myself the compassion I need

These phrases capture the essence of the three components of self-compassion. The first phrase
helps to mindfully open to the sting of emotional pain. (You can also just say “this is really hard right
now” or “this hurts.”) The second phrase reminds us that suffering unites all living beings and reduces
the tendency to feel ashamed and isolated when things go wrong in our lives. The third phrase begins
the process of responding with self-kindness rather than self-criticism. The final phrase reinforces the
idea that you both need and deserve compassion in difficult moments. Be experimental with the phrases.
Other phrases that may feel more authentic in a given situation are “May I accept myself as I am,” “May
I forgive myself,” or “May I learn to accept what I cannot change.”

What Self-compassion is Not

Self-pity. People often avoid taking a compassionate stance toward themselves because they confuse
self-compassion with self-pity. Western culture has a strong “stiff-upper-lip” tradition in which we’re
taught that we should just carry on without complaint. Self-compassion is very different from self-pity,
however. When individuals feel self-pity, they become immersed in their own problems and forget that
others have similar problems. They ignore their interconnections with others and act as if they are the
only ones in the world suffering. Self-pity emphasizes egocentric feelings of separation and exaggerates
the extent of personal distress. Self-compassion, however, allows us to see the related experiences of
self and other without distortion or disconnection.
When we acknowledge how hard it is for us in the moment, the rest of humanity is automatically
included in our concerned attention. Moreover, when we think about what others are going through, we
are often able to put our own situation into greater perspective.

Self-indulgence. An even greater block to self-compassion is the belief that it’s self-indulgent to be kind
to oneself. Many people think that self-criticism is necessary to motivate themselves, and that if they’re
too self-compassionate they’ll just sit around all day watching TV and eating ice-cream. But is this true?
A good analogy can be found in how parents motivate their children. When a mother cares about her
son and desires his well-being, does she indulge him by letting him do whatever he wants (like sitting
around all day watching TV and eating ice-cream?) No. She’ll make sure he does things like eat well,
go to school, finish his homework, brush his teeth, and go to bed early—even if he doesn’t want to—
because it’s necessary for him to grow and be healthy. Her child will also be more motivated to reach
his goals in life when he can count on his mother’s encouragement and support even when he fails.
Self-criticism is also used as a means of shaming oneself into action when confronting personal
weaknesses. However, this approach backfires if weaknesses remain unacknowledged in an
unconscious attempt to avoid self-censure (Horney, 1950). For instance, if you have an anger problem
but continually blame things on your partner because you can’t face up to the truth about yourself, how
are you ever going to achieve a more harmonious relationship? With self-compassion, however, we
strive to achieve for a very different reason—because we care. If we truly want to be kind to ourselves,

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we’ll do things to help us be happy, such as taking on challenging new projects or learning new skills.
And because self-compassion gives us the safety needed to acknowledge our weaknesses, we’re in a
better position to change them for the better.

Self-Esteem. It’s also important to distinguish self-compassion from self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to
the degree to which we evaluate ourselves positively. It represents how much we like or value ourselves,
and is often based on comparisons with others (Coopersmith, 1967; Harter, 1999). In American culture,
having high self-esteem means standing out in a crowd—being special and above average (Heine,
Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). In contrast, self-compassion is not based on positive judgments
or evaluations—it is a way of relating to ourselves. People feel self-compassion because they are human
beings, not because they are special or above average. It emphasizes interconnection rather than
separateness. This means that with self-compassion, you don’t have to feel better than others to feel
good about yourself. It also offers more emotional stability than self-esteem because it is always there
for you—when you’re on top of the world and when you fall flat on your face.

Self-Compassionate Letter
• Candidly describe a problem that tends to make you feel bad about yourself, such as a physical flaw,
a relationship problem, or failure at work or school. Note what emotions come up—shame, anger,
sadness, fear—as you write.
• Next, think of an imaginary friend who is unconditionally accepting and compassionate; someone
who knows all your strengths and weaknesses, understands your life history, your current
circumstances, and understands the limits of human nature.
• Finally, write a letter to yourself from that perspective. What would your friend say about your
perceived problem? What words would he or she use to convey deep compassion? How would your
friend remind you that you’re only human? If your friend were to make any suggestions, how would they
reflect unconditional understanding?
• When you’re done writing, put the letter down for a while and come back to it later. Then read the
letter again, letting the words sink in, allowing yourself to be soothed and comforted.

Thank you for reading the content. For further readings, please read the attached
material in the learning packet.
Now that you had learned about some of the different ways you can do in order
to become a better learner and in taking responsibility in taking care of your self, kindly do
the succeeding learning activities. If you have questions regarding the activity, you may
visit our google class with this code:_______ or contact me to the number indicated
in the course guide. If you had poor connectivity, you are given another week to
accomplish the tasks.

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REFERENCES:
UNIT 1

Philosophy

Dalisay, B. G; et al. (2018). Understanding the Self. Quezon City: C&E Pub., Inc.

Chafee, J. (2013). Who are you? Consciousness, Identity and the Self. In the Philosopher’s Way:
Thinking Critically about Profound Ideas. Pearson. 106 – 169.

Sociology

Mind, Self, and Society, ed. C.W. Morris (University of Chicago 1934)

The Philosophy of the Present, ed. A.E. Murphy (Open Court 1932)

B. Ashcroft; et al. (1998). Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. pp. 159–60.

Cronk, G. George Herbert Mead (1863—1931). Retrieved fromhttps://www.iep.utm.edu/mead/#SH3c

Delfin, A. (2015, April 29) Social self & socialization. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/ArnoldDelfin1/social-self-socialization

Lanuza, G. (n.d.) All that Is Self Melts into Air: Re-writing Filipino Self and Identity in Late Modernity.
Academia.edu

Anthropology

Cohen, Y. A. (1968). Man in adaptation: The cultural present. Chicago: Aldine Pub.

Geertz, C. (1973). The Impact of the Concept of Culture and the Concept of Man. 33 – 54

Psychology

Dalisay, B. G; et al. (2018). Understanding the Self. Quezon City: C&E Pub., Inc.

Eastern and Western Self

Wei-Ming, T. (1985) Marsella (ed). Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives.

UNIT 2

The Physical Self

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Canadian Mental Health Association. (2015). Body Image, Self-Esteem, and Mental Health. Retrieved
September 22, 2018, from http://www.heretohelp.bc.ca/factsheet/body-image-self-esteem-and-mental-
health

Chin-A-Loy, K. (2015, February 13). Body image dissatisfaction and self-concept: What can we do?
Retrieved September 22, 2018, from http://www.anzaed.org.au/body-image-dissatisfaction-and-self-
concept-what-can-we-do

Yam, M., PhD. (2013). Does Culture Matter In Body Image? The Effects Of Subjective And Contextual
Culture On Body Image Among Bicultural Women (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). University of
Michigan. Retrieved September 23, 2018, from
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/97941/meiguan_1.pdf?sequence.

The Sexual Self

Feldman, R. (2008). Understanding Psychology. 8th ed. McGraw Hill. Module 34: Understanding
Human Sexual Response. 369 – 375; Module 35: Diversity of Sexual Behavior. 379 – 385; Module 36:
Sexual Difficulties. 389 – 391 Wolfson (2010). The Chemistry and Chimera of Desire.
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-desire#1

The Material Self

Dittmer, H. I shop therefore I am? Compulsive buying and identity seeking. p. 95; Understanding the
impact of consumer culture. p. 12 in Consumer, Culture, Identity and Well-being, The search for the
“Good life” and the “Body Perfect.”;

The Spiritual Self

Haviland, et. al. (2007) Spirituality, Religion and the Supernatural. In the Essence of Anthropology.
Thomson Wadsworth. 289 – 306.

Demetrio, Fernando & Zialcita. (1991). The soul, 95

– 97. One is not enough. 99 – 101. The Soul Book. GCF
Books. Also: https://lopez-museum.com/2012/10/31/the-soul-according-to-the-indigenous-filipino/

Frankl, V. (1959) Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. Especially Part 2: Basic
Concepts of Logotherapy. 149 -210.

The Political Self

Diokno, MS (1997). Becoming a Filipino Citizen. In Perspectives on Citizenship and Democracy. UP

Third World Studies Center. 17 – 38

Not intended for publication.

For classroom instruction purposes only.
 86

Doronila, ML (1997). An Overview of Filipino Perspectives on Democracy and Citizenship. In

Perspectives on Citizenship and Democracy. UP TWSC.
69 – 112

Zialcita, F. (1997). Barriers and Bridges to a Democratic Culture. In Perspectives on Citizenship and
Democracy. UP TWCS. 39 – 68

The Digital Self

Belk (2013). Extended Self in a Digital World. Journal of Consumer Research. 40. 3.
477 – 500

Gonzales & Hancock. (2010). Mirror, Mirror on my FB Wall: Effects of Exposure to FB on self-esteem.
Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking. Doi:
10.1089/cyber.2009.0411

UNIT 3

Learning to be a Better Student

Michelon, P. Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain. Retrieved from
https://sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/02/26/brain-plasticity-how-learning-changes-your-brain/

J. Dunlosky, K.A. Rawson, E.J. Marsh, M.J. Nathan, & D.T. Willingham. (2013). Improving Students’
Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational
Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14 (1), 4 - 58. Doi:10.1177/15291006124532
66

Setting Goals for Success

Locke, E. (2002). Setting Goals for Life and Happiness. In Snyder & Lopez (eds.) Handbook of Positive
Psychology. Oxford University Press. 299 – 312.

Taking Charge of One’s Health

Neff, K. (2012). The Science of Self Compassion. In Gerner & Siegel (eds). Compassion and Wellness
in Psychotherapy. NY. Guilford Press. 79 -92. Or http://self-
compassion.org/the-research

Tan, Michael article at http://pcij.org/stories/stress - and-the-filipino/

Not intended for publication.

For classroom instruction purposes only.
 87

Rubric for Essay Writing

5 4 3 2
Statements are Most Statements are Fails to provide a
at the best level statements are sometimes on level of
of information at the best level target and information that
that answers of information sometimes off answers the
the question— that answers center. Segments question—either
not too vague the question— of the paper too vague or
but not “lost in not too vague hang together filled with trivial
the details” and but not “lost in but other parts details.
missing the big the details” and are unclear or Statements are
picture. missing the big contradictory internally
Statements are picture. with no good contradictory
mutually Statements are resolution. without
supporting and mutually explanation.
follow from one supporting and
another. follow from one
another.

Not intended for publication.

For classroom instruction purposes only.
 88

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Leonard James T. Roa is a part-time instructor under the College of Arts and Sciences
of Jose Rizal Memorial State University – Main Campus, Dapitan City. He handled
General Education Subjects under the new curriculum such as Ethics, Understanding the
Self, Readings in Philippine History, and The Contemporary World.

Chokie, as he is fondly called by friends, has a colorful, fun-filled, and humble beginnings. He is from
Piñan, Zamboanga del Norte. He finished his Elementary Education at Piñan Central School and
Secondary Education at Piñan National High School. He began his college journey by entering the St.
Alphonsus Collegiate Formation House (Redemptorist Seminary) in Cebu City and spent years studying
Philosophy at the Rogationist Seminary College-Cebu. After 3 blessed years, he transferred to the Cor
Jesu Seminary of the Diocese of Dipolog and finished his Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at St.
Vincent’s College Incorporated. He is currently taking up his master’s degree in Educational
Management at DMC College Foundation Inc., Dipolog City.

Bryan R. Campilan is also a part-time instructor under the College of Arts and
Sciences of Jose Rizal Memorial State University – Main Campus, Dapitan City. He
handled General Education subjects under the new curriculum such as,
Understanding the Self, Readings in Philippine History, Ethics, and Philosophy of Man.

Mcdo, as he is fondly called by his close friends, also has a colorful, fun-filled, and humble beginnings
in life. He is from Brgy. Milad, Polanco, Zamboanga del Norte. He finished his Elementary education at
Milad Elementary School and Secondary education at San Pedro National High School. He began his
journey in college by entering the Cor Jesu Seminary of the Diocese of Dipolog and finished his
bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at St. Vincent’s College Incorporated. He is currently taking up his
master’s degree in Educational Management at DMC College Foundation Inc., Dipolog City.

Not intended for publication.

For classroom instruction purposes only.