Bernal, Alliana Mae J.

BPA 1-1

Leopoldo Bragas, PhD

 Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental,
emotional, and physical health. Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we
very often overlook. Good self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety. It’s also
keys to a good relationship with oneself and others.

 Self-care is an approach to living that incorporates behaviors that refresh you, replenish
your personal motivation, and help you grow as a person. Creating time for yourself each
day is vital in maintaining energy, concentration, and overall wellness. There are three
components of self-care: physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual.
Physical self-care is probably the most obvious form. Going to the gym on a regular basis,
taking a walk, swimming laps, and stretching, are all good examples of physical self-care.
Maintaining an active lifestyle can help boost your immune system, it increases endorphins
(the “happy” hormone), decreases stress, and can increase your self-confidence. Diet also
plays a huge part in your physical well-being. While ordering a cheesy pizza or picking up
carry out after a long workday may sound like a good idea, maintaining a healthy diet is
crucial. Be sure to eat processed foods in small moderation. Because the mind and body
are one, whatever you do to care for your body also impacts your brain, and your mental
wellness.

 Mental and emotional self-care can sometimes be more complex. For someone with a
mental disorder, this may include continuing medication, attending regular therapy
sessions, joining a support group, as well as enjoying time with friends and family. For me,
I find that spending time with my dogs allows me to mentally and emotionally relax after
a stressful day. Any time I begin to feel particularly negative or down, I take a moment to
make a list all of all the things I am thankful for. Sometimes just a gentle reminder about
how much you have to be grateful for is enough to turn your mood around. Other activities
such as taking a relaxing bath, getting a message, keeping a journal, and taking some time
to be alone with your thoughts, can be helpful ways to improve your mental and emotional
wellness.
  Religious or not, spiritual self-care is important for everyone to practice. Spiritual self-care
does not only refer to regular prayer or meditation, it can mean finding a connection to a
higher power (whatever that may be to you) and finding a meaning for our lives. There are
many ways you can practice spiritual self-care. Some examples are taking a nature walk,
watching the sunrise or sunset, volunteering, participating in organized religion, or reading
spiritual literature.

 Self-care is the performance or practice of activities that individuals initiate and perform
on their own behalf to maintain life, health, and well-being.

 Self-Care Requisites

Self-care Requisites or requirements can be defined as actions directed toward the

provision of self-care. It is presented in three categories:

 Universal Self-Care Requisites

Universal self-care requisites are associated with life processes and the maintenance of the
integrity of human structure and functioning.

 The maintenance of a sufficient intake of air

 The maintenance of a sufficient intake of water
 The maintenance of a sufficient intake of food
 The provision of care associated with elimination process and excrements
 The maintenance of a balance between activity and rest
 The maintenance of a balance between solitude and social interaction
 The prevention of hazards to human life, human functioning, and human well-being
 The promotion of human functioning and development within social groups in accord
with human potential, known human limitations, and the human desire to be normal

Metacognition refers to “thinking about thinking” and was introduced as a concept in by John
Flavell, who is typically seen as a founding scholar of the field. Flavell said that metacognition is
the knowledge you have of your own cognitive processes (your thinking).Flavell (1979). It is your
ability to control your thinking processes through various strategies, such as organizing,
monitoring, and adapting. Additionally, it is your ability to reflect upon the tasks or processes you
undertake and to select and utilize the appropriate strategies necessary in your intercultural
interactions.

Metacognition is considered a critical component of successful learning. It involves self-regulation

and self-reflection of strengths, weaknesses, and the types of strategies you create. It is a necessary
foundation in culturally intelligent leadership because it underlines how you think through a
problem or situation and the strategies you create to address the situation or problem.

Many people become accustomed to having trainers and consultants provide them with knowledge
about cultures to the point where they are dependent on the coach, mentor, trainer, or consultant.
However, they need to learn to be experts in cultural situations themselves through metacognitive
strategies such as adapting, monitoring, self-regulation, and self-reflection. Culturally intelligent
leaders can use metacognition to help themselves and to train themselves to think through their
thinking.

Metacognition is broken down into three components: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive

experience, and metacognitive strategies. Each of these is discussed in the following sections.

Metacognitive Knowledge

Metacognitive knowledge involves (a) learning processes and your beliefs about how you learn
and how you think others learn, (b) the task of learning and how you process information, and (c)
the strategies you develop and when you will use them. Let us say you have to learn a new
language in 6 months. Here is how you would think about it, using metacognitive knowledge:

 Learning Process: I am good at learning new languages and I think I can do this in the time
period I have been given.
 Task of Learning: To complete this task, I will need to think about the following:
o How soon can I get information to start learning the language?
o How long will it take me to learn the language?
o What information is available to me to learn this new language?
 o Is this language similar to a language I have learned before?
o Will I be able to learn the language in time?
o How hard will it be for me to learn this language?
o What do I need to do to learn the language?
 The Strategies: I think learning this new language is going to take me 12 months, but I only
have 6 months to prepare. I better find other ways to me meet this goal. I think I will find
out if there is an accelerated language class that I can take. Maybe I should consider hiring
a private tutor, or maybe I will just focus on learning the basics of the language.

Metacognitive Experience

Arnold Bennett, a British writer, said that one cannot have knowledge without having
emotions.Bennett (1933). In metacognition, there are feelings and emotions present that are related
to the goals and tasks of learning. These components of metacognition speaks to metacognitive
experience, which is your internal response to learning. Your feelings and emotions serve as a
feedback system to help you understand your progress and expectations, and your comprehension
and connection of new information to the old, among other things.

When you learn a new language, for example, you may recall memories, information, and earlier
experiences in your life to help you solve the task of learning a new language. In doing this, your
internal responses (metacognitive experience) could be frustration, disappointment, happiness, or
satisfaction. Each of these internal responses can affect the task of learning a new language and
determine your willingness to continue. Critical to metacognition is the ability to deliberately
foster a positive attitude and positive feelings toward your learning.

Metacognitive Strategies

Metacognitive strategies are what you design to monitor your progress related to your learning and
the tasks at hand. It is a mechanism for controlling your thinking activities and to ensure you are
meeting your goals. Metacognitive strategies for learning a new language can include the
following:

 monitoring whether you understand the language lessons;

  recognizing when you fail to comprehend information communicated to you in the new
language;
 identifying strategies that help you to improve your comprehension;
 adjusting your pace for learning the information (for example, studying for 2 hours, rather
than 1 hour, every day);
 maintaining the attitude necessary to ensure you complete the lessons in a timely manner;
 creating a check-in system at the end of each week to make certain you understand what
you have learned.

4 Ways to Build Self-Efficacy

By consolidating his research into four action-items, Bandura offers a tangible way to develop
self-efficacy. As people succeed in any of these four ways, their self-efficacy grows.

1) Mastery Experiences

This refers to experiencing the results of self-efficacy first hand. The key to mastery is approaching
life with dedicated efforts and experimenting with realistic but challenging goals. People need to
acknowledge the satisfaction of goals that are achieved, in order to reap the pleasure of mastery.

Easy success with little effort can lead to us to expect rapid results which can, in turn, make us
easily discouraged by failure (Bandura, 2008). In that same paper, Bandura describes the idea that:

Success is achieved by learning from failed efforts.

Experiencing failure is important so that we can build resilience to it. This is done by treating
every failure as a learning opportunity and a chance to reach competence with a different approach.

2) Social Modeling

This means that people choose role-models who demonstrate their self-efficacy. Motivation can
be found by observing those who employ this in their lives and have reached their goals despite
adversity.
Seeing people similar to oneself succeed with consistent effort, raises the observers’ beliefs in their
own abilities to succeed (Bandura, 2008).

With modern technology, it is not necessary to draw role-models from one’s own social
surroundings. The internet and other digital resources can provide windows into the lives of many
inspiring models.

3) Social Persuasion

When people believe in their own ability, they tend to encounter more success. In this way, self-
efficacy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This mode is often about ‘finding the right mentor.’ While social modeling refers to the observation
of a role model, social persuasion is about having others directly influence one’s self-efficacy and
providing opportunities for mastery experiences in a safe manner.

Due to the specific nature of self-efficacy strengthening experiences (avoiding easy successes and
overwhelming failures), it is essential that mentors are “knowledgeable and practice what they
preach” (Bandura, 2008).

4) States of Physiology

Lastly, our emotions, moods and physical states influence our interpretation of self-efficacy.

It is easy to judge oneself with bias based on the state one in when a failure occurs. While it is
normal to feel tension, anxiety, and weariness, it is common to feel like a societal disappointment
when these feelings occur.

Positive and negative emotions are magnets that influence one’s sense of self-efficacy, especially
in the case of a depressed mood when control can feel out of reach. People with low self-efficacy
may give-up sooner than people with high self-efficacy (Bandura, 2008).
Introspection and education can prevent these physical states from being interpreted negatively.
For example, when experiencing a personal or work-related “failure,” people can practice
compassion towards themselves as people who make mistakes.

In short, changing negative misinterpretations of physical and affective states is key, in order to
build self-efficacy (Bandura, 2008).

The strength self-efficacy scale is one tool which can help build insight and introspection, and
alleviate the need for judging ourselves too harshly when we make mistakes.

Strictly defined, stress is the physical, mental and emotional human response to a particular
stimulus, otherwise called as ‘stressor’.
For instance, if you are to start with making your thesis, the thesis itself is not the stimulus, rather
it’s the deadline, the depth of the subject, the extent of research to be done, and even your partners
in your research group are just some of the many potential stimuli that can influence your response.
The way you respond to these stimuli is exactly what stress is. Stress is the mismatch between
the perceived obstacle and the perceived resources for coping with the "demands" of the obstacle.
The stress response may be thought of as the general component common in all emotions, general
adaption syndrom, where the strength of the response predetermine the strength of the emotion.
Actually this also applies to positive feelings.
What is stressful for one person may not be the same for another, that is why the causes of stress
is diverse and individualized. The most common stressors, though, include hectic work schedule,
heavy work load, family and relationship problems, and financial problems. While these popular
stressors are often pointed as the culprits for stress, do you know that even positive life moments,
like getting married, may also act as stressors?
As long as something demands for your efforts or pushes you to work on it, it can be called a
stressor. Choosing a university to go to, getting married, selecting a car, and other great life events
can be stressful for you. With all these stressors around you, you need to learn about stress
management techniques in order to maintain the balance in your life.

As a concept, self-management has been described and considered for more than 40 years with the
term first used by Thomas Creer to suggest that patients are active participants in their own
treatments.14 Today, the term self-management is used widely and is described by a variety of
definitions and conceptualizations, which contribute to a lack of clarity and agreement in the
literature.15 At a broad level, self-management is defined as the day-to-day management of
chronic conditions by individuals over the course of an illness.5,14

Although self-management is often used interchangeably with terms such as self-care, self-
regulation, patient education, and patient counseling, self-management has evolved beyond the
practice of merely providing information and increasing patient knowledge. Although the concepts
are related, self-care is interpreted by many authors as consisting of those tasks performed at home
by healthy people to prevent illness, rather than merely managing existing illness.5,15,16 Self-
regulation is more distantly related, referring to the capacity to control and manage thoughts,
emotions, or behavior. Adding to the lack of uniformity in the use of the term self-management is
its use in referring to (1) the process of self-management, (2) self-management intervention
programs, and (3) the description of outcomes gained by engaging in self-management practices