Shawndalee Brooks COM 2110 Professor Keith Radley December 1, 2013 Final Report on Relational Change Project = Overview:

Unwanted Communication Pattern My habit of jumping to conclusions has always created problems for me. By letting my habit control my life, I have only created more trouble for myself. It has had an impact on not only my friends and family but also myself. I really wanted to be able to create a change that would benefit my life, rather than take away form it. With everyone I would meet, I would assume and jump to conclusions about things. By jumping to conclusions about things, I only seemed to push people away from me, leaving me to feel alone and helpless. There are a couple times I seem to remember that by jumping to conclusions, it resulted in me loosing something. One of the times I really remember is back like two years ago, I was not sure where my relationship was going with my boyfriend. So what I did to test out if I could trust him is set him up to assume he would fall for what I had planned. The problem with the whole situation is I did not trust him, and I assumed that he would of done the worse. I created a big problem by doing such a thing because I jumped to a conclusion of what was going to happen, even though I wasnt even sure for myself what could of actually happened. Another time I caught myself jumping to a conclusion is when one of my close friends started dating my ex. It was right after we had just broken up, and he asked her on a date. They started seeing each other and I took that is she was trying to hurt me, and that she must be trying to make me mad. I thought that she was a horrible friend for thee longest time, that is before I talked to her. After talking to her I had more of a clear explanation of things and she brought to my attention that what had happened was not in fact intentional. By jumping to conclusions in both situations there were consequences. How it really impacted my relationship with my boyfriend is I created a problem with trust. By setting him up to fail, and expected of that from him, in a way I contributed to the trust issues we have today. With my close friend the consequences of me jumping to conclusions about what her intensions were, I about lost one of the greatest friends I could possibly have. Why Jumping to conclusions is ineffective is because all your doing is making inferences about things. It is not something that is proven or fact, but more so an assumption or guess about something. To truly be better off is not jump to conclusions. Overview:

Strategies Through this process I wanted to find ways that were going to help me break my habit and form strategies that would help prevent me from taking a step back rather than forward in the process of not jumping to conclusions. I planned on using strategies such as avoidance and ways to overcome the temptation to assume. Way I practiced this is by learning to slow down my thinking. Sometimes my mind seems to go a million times an hour with thoughts and can seem to be very overwhelming. So anytime I wanted to assume or make a conclusion about something I almost had to stop thinking, and give myself the time to think of other reasons for things other than what I originally would think. By doing this exercise it helped me have more control of my thoughts and feelings. Second strategy I used dealt with situations where I would tend to get mad and confused. Things I do when I am mad or confused about something is to yell and raise my voice. When there is miscommunication about things and in my mind I have already made an assumption about what is going on, yelling does not help. So how I planned to help better understand a message someone is trying to convey to me, I know work on my breathing as well as focusing on what the speaker has to say. When I have questions about something. I ask in a lower voice to clarify the message and clear up my conclusion about what had happened. Another big strategy that helped me personally was to not gunnysack. It is hard to get over something that has happened before, and is bound to happen again to not jump to a conclusion about it. That has always been a struggle with me, so I had to work on forgetting and be forgiving of the past. If I ever was to bring up negative thoughts or ideas that would create or lead to a conclusion about something, I would ask others around me to remind me to no do that and to drop it. The past is the past and that is where it needs to stay. How a strategy is supposed to work is by really trying to accomplish the goal or the plan. By keeping focus on what you really want and keeping to the plan or strategy you can overcome anything. A strategy is there to help guide you along the way towards something whatever it may be. Why I had chose the strategies I did to help lead me to a better off is, because I know myself best and what I struggle with. I know my strengths and weaknesses and where there needs to be improvement. That is why I believe setting a plan and having strategies has helped improve on my habit of jumping to conclusions. An example put into play would be, when in a heated fight with my friend or my boyfriend over a miscommunication that led to me assuming the worse of a situation. It causes a lot of conflict but what I have learned is to keep calm, breathe and relax. Keep an open mind and be willing to come to an understanding with the other person. By following those steps it has helped eliminate conflict and jumping to conclusions. Overview: Constraints There were many cases where it seemed nearly impossible to keep focus on what my goal was. Challenges would come and it almost was so hard to deal with that everything I had learned and how far I had come almost seemed worthless. There

were many times I struggled with not jumping to conclusions about anyone or anything. Challenges I would face are when my boyfriend would lie or hide something from me. That makes it so hard to trust someone and wouldnt give me the chance to not jump to conclusions about whatever he said. Everything would seem like a lie or cover up and trying to keep focus on not jumping to conclusions was so extremely hard at that point in time. Another example of challenges I faced was when a friend had called me up one day and wanted a ride. This friend of mine had not talked to me in months, and would never reply to my texts or calls. The oneday that she had called me up and wanted a ride I could only assumed she wanted to use me for a ride somewhere and that is it. That made it very hard for me to not think that she wasnt just using me. I felt like sense I did not give her a ride, because I assumed that was all she wanted to see me for was that reason, that it had caused some tension between us. Times like these made it seem impossible to overcome the thoughts I had going through my mind at the time. Keeping focus on my goal of not jumping to conclusions did not work out in my favor during this time. Overview: Implementation The new wanted behavior I wanted was to be able to have more trust with people, and work on communicating with them to make sure there are no miss understandings. How I would enact the new wanted behavior is by keeping a positive attitude. Every time I felt like I couldnt do it or doubted myself I stopped myself and told myself I could. I learned by keeping a positive attitude it can have a huge impact on the way you think about things. I would ask for help from people I usually would assume things about, and have them point out when I was assuming and jumping to conclusions about them. By asking help from people it really helped me with support and helped pushed me towards my goal. Changes that I have made are I now let people explain themselves before I jump to a conclusion about what I thought they meant. One of the scenarios where I had to practice my new skills is one day I got into a huge argument with my boyfriend. He had lied to me and instead of jumping to the conclusion he did it to make me mad or to hurt me, I gave him the chance for him so speak for himself. I held back what I had to say to hear him out, and when I would get upset or angry I would slow down my breathing and relax. By doing that I helped reduce the chances of me yelling and creating a bigger conflict than before. Like I have talked about previously with my friend who asked for a ride, I jumped to the conclusion that she was just using me. Later on I rethought things through and changed my way of thinking, that maybe I was taking it in a selfish way and that she was looking to me for a time in need. Whether she was going to use me for a ride or not, I should of just done it and saw what would happen before I was to judge the situation. I planned to work more on my trust issues I have with people. I more so failed on trying to achieve this goal because it is very difficult to just give trust out to people who have lied and hurt you before. People who have taken advantage of your trust and abused it really hurts, and makes it difficult to when trying to avoid jumping to conclusions, because the trust

in no longer there. Therefore making it so easy to just want to make conclusions and assumptions about everything. What prevented myself from overcoming this goal was the fear I had and that I felt like I wouldnt be able to overcome it. I still struggle with giving trust but I have gotten better at ways to learn to let people earn trust back. Overview: Results: I learned a lot from this experience by challenging myself to become better at something I lacked at. By setting goals and finding new ways and strategies to help overcome my fears and weaknesses. It feels like by taking the time to stop and reflect on myself was a real treat. For once to think about myself and what I need to do succeed. I gained new ways to focus on what I need to improve on and reasons why I should stay focused and work more on my problems rather than other peoples. Some positive consequences that I got from this was it really brought my boyfriend and I closer together. By both of us working on something we both lacked, we could support each other the whole way. We could talk to each other for positive and negative reinforcement as well as feedback. I learned more about myself through this experience and being able to reflect upon my progress as well as pointing out other areas I need to focus on. Being more open minded and willing to listen to others, I learned a lot about other people. I learned things about others around me I wouldnt of realized before if I didnt stop to let them talk. There were also some negative consequences that came along with this such as, sometimes by trying so hard to not jump to conclusions or to try and trust people I also gotten taken advantage of sometimes. There were times where I felt like trying to stay true to what I set my goal to be, was not worth it because there were times where I didnt see any change happening. When you dont see or feel like anything has changed or improved, it is hard to keep positive and say yes things will get change and get better just going to take some time. My plans worked out fifty-fifty, because there was change that did happen, but not everything I was hoping for changed. That does not mean than its still not possible, because if I can keep thinking it will change and has the potential to change it can and it will. I wouldnt say that my plans havent worked out, because that Is not entirely true. Yes, I would like to still improve on my goals, having more trust and better communication, which will come in time. I am willing to continue to try my best to be fully happy and satisfied with where I am with communication. Ways that my plans have not worked out is in the sense that I am not content with the results that I have gotten. I feel better than before with the progress I have made, but I feel like there is more to be done with my goals. It is a two way street I am heading on not knowing where it may take me, but all I can say is I am on it for the long hall. Why I am more so not content with my results is because I still jump to conclusions time to time. I still cannot fully trust and give everyone my word that I believe him or her. For me to be fully satisfied with my change I have feel like I never have to make conclusions about people again. To be able to give someone my trust and know that it is okay to do so. I want to feel like I

can handle a situation while being able to hold myself together without an explosive reaction. Only than will I feel content and happy with my results as a whole. When I can overcome all those things, than I will feel like I have accomplished my goal of change. Overview: Recommendations To further my progress with my goals I will continue my actions previously as this semester ends and continue them unto next semester. If I feel that there is no change or progress still I may add some new ideas and strategies to test them out as well. I will not just forget the strategies and plans I have been using, but rather just add them into my new plans. By combining new ways to take my goals further and to be more successful with them, that itself is a new way of thinking about it. I may try new things by expanding whom I usually work with my goals, unto new people who I can see if I have made progress and can have a fresh start with people. I want to be able to apply what I learn to my everyday life. I will in fact modify my actions to make sure I am taking the right procedures to accomplish what I want. If things get worse over time by doing what I have been practicing, I may than switch it up by finding new ways that make it work. Setting goals and trying to accomplish them with a plan is more so a trial and error. All you can really do is try it out, see how it goes, observe the results than come to a conclusion if its working or not. I may apply theories to help guide me along the way such as, Impression formation theory and Uncertainty reduction theory. Other things I am going to keep in mind while doing this is thought, and reframing from going to back to how I use to be. I am also going to work on saying sorry when I am wrong about something or accuse someone of something.

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