Concept I Take With Me

Because of this class I feel that I will be able to bring a better form of communication with all of my personal relationships.  Before taking this class I felt that I had pretty good communication skills with ones that are close to me.  However, I realized that I had a lot of areas that I could improve my way of communicating with others.  One thing that I felt that needed to be changed is how I tend to voice my opinion to others when that is not what they are looking for from me.  I also learned that avoiding a situation that is built around tension needs to be resolved in a timely manner.  I have learned that it is not a good idea for the problem to linger on, or else it could damage the relationship beyond repair.  These concepts will help build relationships that I already have, and I feel that it will make me a better communicator with others that are close in my life.

What I liked, disliked, and improvements

What I liked about the class was the fact that the assignments were very self explanatory.  With past online classes that I took the assignments were not very user friendly like this course was.  The fact that our instructor also responded to our emails very quickly was another thing I like about this online course.  One thing that I didn't like too much about the course was the twelve hour waiting period between posts.  With my schedule outside of school it sometimes was tough to reach that window.  It wasn't that big of a dislike, but it was something that I didn't like very much.  I wouldn't really change anything about the course.  I felt that it was very smooth operating and very user friendly.  The assignments were easy to comprehend, and the teaching factor was very useful with the instructor responding quickly to emails.  Don't change a thing...well maybe the twelve hour window factor ;).  Thanks for a great class!!!

What I learned

Internet classes are something that people (including myself) think are going to be much easier then an in person lecture course.  This is so far away from being the truth.  Rather than being easier it actually is a lot more tough.  Some reasons from my personal experience are the factors of procrastination and time management.  I would seem to wait until the last minute on some assignments thinking that I can work on them later than sooner.  I would then realize that I would sometimes not have the correct amount of time to complete the assignments when they needed to be finished.  It has taught me that I need to put myself in a position that I need to complete my assignments early.

When it came to the class concepts I learned that relationships take a lot of work to maintain with communication.  Both parties need to have the ability to want to help the relationship for it to be maintained healthy.  I can say that from what I learned it will serve as useful tools that I can be used in all of my relationships that I partake in my life.  I also learned that the relationship I built with my girlfriend took all the steps in building a romantic relationship.  I didn't realize that my girlfriend and I actually went through all the steps until I wrote my paper about our relationship, and how it progressed.

Concept: Types of Marriage

The text describes six types of marriage in our society.  The six types of marriage consist of vital, total, passive-congenial, devitalized and conflict-habituated marriage.  Vital portrays a close bond in the categories of emotion and sexual closeness.  This makes both parties involved satisfied with the relationship, and in turn creates a stable relationship.  A total relationship shows similarities as vital does, but the major difference is each person still has their independence from one another.  This is shown by giving each other space and separation.  Passive-congenial has qualities of low passion in the relationship.  Rather than finding happiness and satisfaction within the relationship it is found in activities that are outside of it.  Devitalized marriages are a potential reasoning on why many marriages end up in divorce.  This is when couples that are in a marriage become bored with each other, and have no passion to continue on with it.  Finally, in a conflict-habituated marriage there are traces that lead to showing the couple having no compatibility at all.  I feel that many marriages that involve younger people share this type of marriages since young couples tend to rush into marriage without knowing if they are fully compatible or not.

Marriage in 50 Years

     One thing that I have noticed in past five years is how much younger people are getting married.  It seems like a lot of young adults, even at the age of eighteen get married right away.  Normally I wouldn't really care or think anything of it, but divorce rates have drastically gone up in recent years as well.  This leads me to believe that it's only going to get worse as the years roll on until people make changes.  The problem is everyone is free to make whatever decisions they want to make, and that is completely their decision to make.  Yet I believe that divorce rates are going to be insanely high in the next fifty years. 
     I feel that young adults rush into a marriage these days with not knowing what they are really getting themselves into.  You have to really know how life is going to change for you, and your significant other.  I have had friends that were younger than me already get married and then only last no more a year before they decided separate and get a divorce since it wasn't working.  It's things like this that make marriage seem like it means nothing to people, and it makes me wonder if marriage is even special anymore with people taking advantage of it.  It needs to stop before marriage is just seen as one big joke in our society.

Families

Family is everything to me.  Normally you would think that family means a father, mother, and children.  You could also put cousins, aunts, uncles,  and grandparents into that category as well.  These are great examples of what a family would consist of.  However, even though I do believe in family like the examples above it's not the only way that I define family.  My family doesn't stop at blood, but it connects to my closest friends as well.  This includes my best friends, girlfriend, and my girlfriends family.  All of these people are a part of my family outside of my blood family.  This especially means a lot to me when it comes to my girlfriend as someday our two families will be connected once we get married after I graduate.  Two separate families will become one because of this.  With this being known my girlfriend and I would have to say that we have a total marriage even though we're not married yet.  We enjoy each others company for entertainment, but we also have our separate interests that that we want to individually pursue at the same time.  

Chapter Concept: Trust

I chose the concept of trust since trust means a lot to me in my morals and values that I hold.  Trust can be defined as two different things that are both very important: 1. To assume emotional reliability with the other, 2. showing that there is confidence in others when it comes to dependability.  The person that I can say I have the utmost trust in is my girlfriend.  She has always been there for me when I needed her, and she has never judged me for choices that I have made for the last three years.  Trust is something that I don't have come naturally with others.  They have to earn my trust by showing me that they want me to be a more open person.  If they show me that they want to have my trust then I know that they are a true friend.  I know they will be there for me when I need them, and I will be there for them if they need me.  It revolves around dependability and reliability for me among other factors.

My Best Friend

The person that is my true best friend is my girlfriend who I plan on proposing to sometime soon once I graduate.  That is how much I trust her in life since marriage is a big step in life.  However, I have decided to talk about my long term best friend that I have known since my junior year of high school.  We met through a mutual friend have pretty much been inseparable since then.  We clicked right away since we had a lot in common.  To this day I can say that I can trust him with anything that I have to disclose to someone when I need to vent or get something off my mind.  I know that he is a person that will always be there for me when I need him, and vice verse.  Qualities like this are hard to find with someone since it's hard to find trust and loyalty with another.  It takes believing in another person to make strides in building a relationship like this, and I feel that it does co-exist with what the book was trying to explain.

Forum Post

What's up everyone!  First off I hope everyone had a great spring like I did.  Nothing beats Vegas!  Anyway I went and explored the forums page to see what it was like.  One thing stood out to me that made me feel that it didn't truly agree with my morals and values I hold with my friends.  It was the section that dealt with dealing and solving issues between friends.  I cannot really agree the advice and suggestions that the forum recommends.  This is because that they don't put into factor individual personalities, and more specifically mine and my friends.  The friendships I have with my friends is unique and different from others just like everyone else is with their own friends.  No one is similar and that is what makes each person and their friends different from one another.  Only I and my friends can really understand and know how to handle a disagreement or argument between us since we know each other well enough to know how to handle the situation.

Trust

The concept I decided to choose from this chapter dealt with trust in personal relationships.  Trust involves believing in another's reliability and emotionally relying on another to look our for our welfare and our relationship.  Trust involves work in the beginning of any relationship, and must be constantly growing to see a relationship grow and succeed.  It can be considered a proving ground between people to see if the relationship is one that can be pursued.  This can be a relationship involving friendship or romantically pursuance.  Either way it builds a relationship with someone that we want to have in our lives.  Trust shows us that we can take steps with someone that we normally wouldn't with someone that we don't trust.  In other words we take risks with these individuals.  It also allows us to disclose personal information about ourselves that we normally wouldn't with others.  This is crucial to be able to open up when we need someone to talk to.

Confirmation

The three different confirmations include recognition, acknowledgement, and endorsement.  Recognition recognizes that another person exists.  Acknowledgement is when you understand and acknowledge what others feel, think, or say.  Finally, endorsement involves accepting what another feels or thinks.  I feel that I am someone that people can approach with a dilemma that they are preoccupied with in life.  I always recognize people that I know directly, and when they need someone to talk to I am there for them.  I try to be like this towards others since I would want them to be the same way if the roles were reversed and I needed someone that I could approach.  I try to understand and listen the best I can so I can see where they are coming from, and try to understand how they are feeling at the moment in time.  If I am able to accomplish this then I can truly understand what they are feeling, and know how they are dealing with it too.

Defensive Conversations

When it comes to acting defensive in a conversation or argument I can think of plenty of times that I have been.  I tend to take a lot after my mother in personality and emotions.  Like her I consider myself strong-willed, determined, stubborn, and opinionated.  Due to some of these similarities I tend to be defensive on particular subjects and in arguments.  I have been in arguments with friends, family, and my girlfriend and I tend to be defensive on my side of the story when I feel I'm being attacked.  Certain times I tend to be wrong and other times I tend to be right.  Either way I notice myself never always taking a defensive stance on the subject.  I place this more on a factor of pride since I don't like being wrong.  I need to learn that sometimes I just need to learn to "bite the bullet" to resolve the issue from getting way more out of control than it needs to be.  This is an issue that is not easy for me to resolve since it's a trait that I feel has been lingering since I was a teenager, but it doesn't mean that it is impossible to accomplish.

Weekly Concept

Social expectations is a concept that really made me think about how I express and hold in particular emotions of how I feel.  For me, I was raised to be a strong and non-emotional person.  My father always told me to be compassionate, but to also not show weakness at the same time.  I didn't really know how to go about this until I realized how both my parents, but mainly my father raised me and my brother.  He was a very loving and caring person when it came to our family.  Yet when my brother or I did something wrong and had to be punished he would have to be that stern adult figure that couldn't show weakness from withholding our punishment.  I used to hate how we would be so stern on us, but now I understand why he did it.  He was preparing us for the real world, and that knowing what consequences became of wrongful actions.  He wanted us to learn what it took to be a "man" in the adult world when we became independent from the family.  It's a lesson that I have followed and kept to heart since I understood what he was teaching us.

Fallacies

Men and women have always had expectations on what kind of emotions to express in our society.  Women are supposed to be sensitive and not show signs of anger, while men need to show the opposite.  For me I don't like to show my emotions on a regular basis.  It probably has to do with a pride issue that I have, but also because of my social status and expectations as a man.  People that know me always see me as this strong willed individual that doesn't show off emotions since I can usually control them.  What I need to start doing is being honest with myself, and others about my emotions.  I'm not saying that deep down I'm a over sensitive cry baby, but I need to be able to express more of my emotions rather than bottling them in.  It definitely doesn't help since doing that only causes me stress frustration.

Perspectives and Emotions

The perspective that I can relate to the most is physical influences when it comes to emotions.  I feel that this one is a major one for a lot of people since we are always surrounded by things that can cause emotions of all kinds.  This can be intentional or unintentional depending on what it is that triggers the emotion.  The funny thing is we could see emotions out of people that we don't normally see.  Sometimes we view this as a surprise or funny depending if we don't normally see that particular emotion.  My girlfriend stubbed her toe the other day in her condo, and she started swearing up a storm.  My first reaction was laughing at her because of the things she was saying while she was on the ground in pain.  She looked at me with some of the angriest eyes I never seen and asked what I thought was funny.  I told her I was laughing at what she was disclaiming out loud and not that she hurt herself.  She started laughing since she realized that she said some crude and out of the ordinary things that she normally wouldn't say.

Chapter Concept: The Process Of Becoming A Better Listener

We listen to sounds of every kind throughout our day, beginning when we wake up.  Let's face it anybody can listen, but it's a matter of what we want to listen to and process in our heads.  Sometimes we care about what we're hearing, and there are other times when we don't care at all.  This can be extremely harmful if someone is trying to disclose something to us and we blow them off by not paying attention, or not caring.  It can ruin relationships of any kind.  Again anyone that can or has the ability to can listen, but what does it take to be an experienced listener.  Listening requires being mindful, receiving physical messages, selecting and organizing material, interpreting communication, responding, and remembering.  Seems like a lot more work and motivation once we realize there are many steps to being a good listener.  Yet following these steps helps us by making us more approachable to people since they will look at you for disclosure.  All these steps are important, but I feel that mindfulness is the important.  This is not only because it is the first step, but also because it lets the other person know that you are there paying attention to what they are wanting to say.  If we all learn to become better listeners then we are only enhancing ourselves, and our relationships.

Listening: A 10 Part Skill

The ten parts that make up listening consist of finding an area of interest, judging content and not delivery, holding your fire, listening for ideas, being flexible, working at listening, resisting distractions, exercising your mind, keeping your mind open and finally capitalizing on thought speed.  Listening is an activity that we do throughout our lives.  Listening is a major factor for succeeding in college for example.  If we don't pay attention to what the instructors are giving us then the chance of failure rises drastically.  This can be linked to me since I'm one of those people that needs to constantly be moving, or doing something productive.  I am not saying that my education isn't productive, but I hate being stuck at a desk for long periods of time.  It makes me lose interest, and in turn decreases the amount of information that I process since I'm not listening as well.  Reading about these skills hopefully will change this about myself, and make me a better listener in all aspects of my life.

Defensive Listening

If I had to choose one type of listening that I need to improve on it is defensive listening.  Defensive listening can be seen as receiving criticism, but taking it only as a negative and not as improvement.  At first I never really thought I included myself in this factor of listening, but I have come to realize that I have become naive to it until now.  When I think about past conversations I've had with family, friends, and my girlfriend there were times that I definitely was guilty of defensive listening.  When I got criticized about my flaws I would avoid the subject and walk away from the problem.  It ended up causing a bigger problem with people I care about since it would end up dragging on much longer than it needed to.  It would also be my tendency to get defensive about what was being said by yelling back at them and calling them out on flaws they had to take the problem off of me.  To help fix this problem I need to learn to control my emotions.  It's not an easy fix since it takes time to break a habit that's been happening for years.  Yet it's the best way to go about it since I want to help improve my relationships with the people I hold close to me, but also to help improve myself.

Speech Communities

The concept that I chose to write about this week was speech communities.  We are raised within these communities beginning at a young age.  In the end we choose what communities we want to be in, and with our choice comes how we relate to speaking in that community.  To further go into detail about speech communities is how our gender can help choose what kind of community we place ourselves in.  Depending how we're raised as children helps enlighten our choice.  This can be defined as Gender Speech Communication.  For example, I was raised in a family that has a history of military members and sports affiliation.  Because of these affiliations I placed myself in a setting that had me playing baseball, football, and joining a military program called the U.S. Naval Sea Cadets.  Within all these activities I was taught teamwork, discipline, leadership, and motivation as some examples of what I learned.  Being brought up with these came along the mindset of working as a team and relying on one another rather than being an individual.  Speech communities varies from person to person, and everyone has their own choice of what community to be in.  Once we choose we make friendships with people that are also in the same community.  With extra help from others in the same community that we place ourselves in we create who we are growing up, and what future speech communities we decide to associate with.

Hate Speech

Hate speech is a way of communication that speaks down to people.  It primarily focuses on insulting people due to their race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.  According to the Free Speech Museum it is seen as speech that is racist or anti-semitic.  As much as it wrong for this kind of speech it would be a step back since it would violate the right to Freedom of Speech.  I don't agree with this kind of speech, but people are free to say what they want since it is one of our rights as citizens of America.  The true solution to solve this would be ban this kind of speech all together, but that is not going to happen.  We can only hope that people see how hurtful and painful this kind of speech is, and hope they change their ways.  Other than this type of solution it's not going to stop in the near future.

Metaphors

Describing the United States as a melting pot is not really the way I would describe out nation.  When I think melting pot it's everyone that resides in the United States becoming one mind, and one person.  Most of all I feel like it means that there is no individualism when I hear our nation being described as a melting pot.  Jesse Jackson's metaphors were more realistic to say rather than a melting pot since they describe items that include differentiation between one another.  I feel that a better metaphor to describe our nation is a bag of original M&M's.  I say this because we are different on the outside like the different colors in a bag of original M&M's, but we are all Americans on the inside just like all original M&M's taste the same on the inside.  We are a country of different races and cultures that make up what America is.  We shouldn't melt it all together and lose our sense of individualism, but embrace our individualism and know that we are all Americans on the inside.

Week 3 DQ: Concept

The concept that I decided to choose was self-concept.  Self-concept is defined as a process in which an individual sees him or herself as unique from others and their surroundings.  This is an important concept to me since I believe that everyone is unique from one another.  Even though many of us come from the same race, ethnicity, or religion for examples, we are all independent and unique due to our personality and actions.  Self-concept is made up of four guidelines that need to be followed:

Making a firm commitment to our personal growth: this is where we make a change about our present self.  To achieve this we must be determined to pursue this goal if we want to see the change/s happen.  It takes hard work and dedication to reach our goal if we want it to happen.

Gaining and using knowledge to help support personal growth: the knowledge we gain can either be from good or bad outcomes.  The best way that I can describe this is that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger.  With knowledge that we gain helps us improve our self.

Setting realistic goals: you never want to make goals that are far out of our ability to achieve.  You always want to make them goals that you know will take hard work, but able to achieve at the end of the journey.  To help motivate ourselves it is best to start out with something small before making a bigger life changing goal.

Seeking contexts that help support change:  placing ourselves in a positive setting is very important.  If we set ourselves up in negative setting then we are not helping with our progress to achieve our goal/s.  You want to be around people that are going to support, encourage, and motivate you.  People that don't do these things are only going to slow down your progress, or even stop it altogether.

Week 3 DQ: Race

Race is classified by any many different categories.  These categories include characteristics from our heritage, geographic location and ancestry, ethnicity, and our physical traits.  Race is a common way of identifying people in our society.  Unfortunately, certain people don't always identify people in a good light or mindset.  An example of this can be shown from past events in the world when Nazi empowered Germany believed that they were the most dominant race in the world, and believed all of others were below them.  This was one of many reasons why the world went to war, and why majority of the world fought for other people's freedom.  I want to point out that I do not bring this up to purposely offend anybody by bringing up the Nazi organization, but to only back up my statement that race was not always seen as a good thing in certain people's eyes or beliefs.  Race makes everyone unique in their own certain way, and our individualism makes us even more unique beyond our race.

The United States is a nations of freedom and rights to all American citizens.  We are all seen as equals in our nation's eyes of rights and freedoms.  Citizens of different races join together, and this leads to a lot of us being molded into individuals with multiple races and backgrounds in our make up.  With this being said, I believe that it is fair for the Census Bureau to allow individuals to check multiple races rather than only one.  If we are to only check one race we are only lying to others, but most importantly to ourselves.  It is not fair to our many heritages that a lot of us were grown up to learn and appreciate.  

Week 3 DQ: Gender Roles

I spoke to my best friend's grandparents since mine have passed on.  When I spoke to them they said that men and women were not really seen as equal and had different gender roles at that time.  Men were considered to be the "breadwinners", and expected to bring home food and profit to the family.  Women were to marry, provide a clean house, and take care of the children.  They told me that this was the way of living and social statuses at the time, and there was really no other way of living.

I also interviewed my best friend's father and mother as well since my father is an Alzheimer's patient, and isn't able to carry a conversation to an extent like this.  When I spoke to his father about what it was like to be a man in his 20's he told me that women were still seen as a stay at home wife and mother.  This was still the status of most women even though they were able to have jobs in the work environment.  Even though he didn't women in this light this was how he was raised, and was told to finish college and get good paying job to support the family.

His mother was raised a bit differently even though she knew the stereotype of what women were to be in their 20's.  She agreed with her husband in the way how men and women were portrayed in society at the time, but she considered herself outside of the stereotype of women.  She was a very independent woman, and wanted to finish school to get a career job, and help support her family.  She believed that women had the same rights and responsibilities as men do.  She would stay at home when she had her kids, but when she able to return to work she took advantage of it.

With today's men and women in their 20's it is nothing like it was twenty and forty years ago.  Today, men and women have their own independent goals.  This can range from graduating from college, finding a career job to make money, starting a family, being a stay at home wife/or husband, etc.  This is because men and women have the same rights as each other according to our rules.  Anyone has the right and freedom to make whatever decision (good or bad) they want to make as long as they are willing to deal with the consequences and benefits that come with their decision/s.  Men and women are free to also express themselves however they want too.

Week 2 Discussion Question Part 3

Concept:
I-It Communication-This type of communication is the most impersonal of the three types.  This is where individuals treat others more in lines of an object rather than people. We act as if they don't exist and don't acknowledge their presence when around us. An example of this would be the way people treat salesclerks, restaurant servers, etc.

I-You Communication-Majority of our interactions surface in this level. We don't fully engage a particular individual as someone who is unique, but we also don't treat them as an object either. This can be seen when talking to someone in class, interacting with people inside a bar or nightclub.

I-Thou Communication-This is considered to the highest level communication and dialogue.  It is also said to be the rarest form of relationship.  I-Thou is where we let our guard down to an individual/s that we know we can trust.  It is considered that we become fully human and genuine.  This can include a romantic relationship with boyfriends towards girlfriends (and vice verse), marriage, or close friends.

Week 2 Discussion Questions Pt. 2

The old linear model was revised back in 1949 by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver.  When they revised it they added onto the model the factor of noise.  They described it as a factor that causes a loss of information from the source to the destination.  The problems with this model was it portrayed communication as only going one way-from a sender to a passive receiver.

When it comes to the interactive model it portrayed communication as listeners giving feedback, or what is also known as a response.  The model also applies the communication factor of creating and interpreting messages within personal fields of experience.  Basically when fields of experience coincide with each other there is more understanding, and less understanding when they fields don't overlap.

The interactive model can applied in my life with people that I consider my really good friends compared to people that I only see as an acquaintance.  With my friends I'm able to hold a conversation because we all have many things in common.  There is never that awkward silence of not knowing what to say with them unlike people I see as an acquaintance.  Those awkward silences and lack of things in common show me that I cannot really associate myself with this person on a much closer basis than I am with my real friends.

Week 2 Discussion Question Pt. 1

I have been with my girlfriend for about two and a half years now.  Throughout that time we have gone through amazing times as well as some very troubling ones too.  When we first saw each other it was a fourth of July party at a mutual friend's house in our hometown of Los Gatos.  Both us kept on looking at each other, but didn't approach one another until I decided to "man up" and go talk to her.  Once I broke the ice and introduced myself to her and her friends talking to her came very easy.  Before we went our seperate ways we exchanged numbers and continued to communicate by phone until our first date two days later.  Very quickly it went from an I-You situation to an I-Thou communication situation.

Our first date was like any other first date with a potential relationship.  We talked about our favorite things, love for sports (which attracted me to the full capacity with her), where we were born and raised (both from Los Gatos), etc.  We didn't really get into very much personal information until our third date.  That was where I began disclosing personal information a lot of people don't really know about me or my family, except for the few people that I trust in life.  I could tell that I could trust her with the knowledge I was telling since I could see the kind of person she was.  It was mutual feedback from her end too with her disclosing personal information about herself as well.  We dated for a month before we both felt it was the right time to pursue a real relationship.

After being together for this period of time we both realized that we really don't have any topics that we can't discuss between one another.  As I said before we have had our fair share of good times and bad times.  Yet we always got through the bad times by talking it out, and becoming a stronger couple with each issue.  Both of us are very stubborn people and we know we feed off of each other's emotions sometimes.  However, we understand that it takes two to solve a problem and we always end up solving our differences.  I would be lying if I said that we were the same now from when we met, and that's okay with me.  The way I see we make each other stronger and are always there for each other when we need the other.  She is my best friend, and that why I plan on proposing to her in the near future. 

Introductory Post

Hey there everyone! My name is Mike, but for this course we are partaking on I am known as NinerPride408.  I am Communication Studies major at San Jose State University. If everything goes according to plan I should be done with SJSU by the end of next spring 2013 with my BA. I am a transfer student through West Valley Community College where I received my AA in both Liberal Arts and Communication Studies. I am new to the blogging thing so I am hoping this course will make me for familiar with this whole blogging phase.

I am a huge sports fan, and I am a huge bay area sports fanatic.  My favorite teams are the San Jose Sharks, Golden State Warriors (even though they are really bad), and San Francisco Giants/49er fan (hence my name). My grilfriend (and soon to be fiancee) are current ticket holders of the 49ers, and we have already guaranteed our seats for the new stadium being constructed in Santa Clara. I like to be constantly active in my life since I cannot stand still. This makes being in school very difficult since I don't like sitting down and not moving around. However I understand that getting my degree is a MUST to be able to move in life. On my own time I am a workout freak as well is my girlfriend. I also partake in mix martial arts to also help keep me active and in shape.  The particular martial arts that endulge in are Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Muy Thai Boxing, and Kickboxing. Some of my favorite shows I enjoy watching are Sportscenter (like that wasn't obvious at this point), Sons of Anarchy, Archer, Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Family Guy, South Park, The Office, and Modern Family.

To finish a little about myself I just want to say that my biggest fear is failing in life, or for that matter in anything.  Even though I can't succeed in everything I know that what I don't succeed only makes me stronger.