What Conflicts Can Lead To

Interpersonal conflicts are so common in our lives that we will never need to fear the lack of them to “hype up” our lives. Since they are such a common sight, we need to know how to resolve them effectively.


If we were to fight and battle to resolve every single conflict we have, we would be battered before we even reach adulthood.

I’ve been involved in countless of conflicts with people around me, but this particular conflict left a rather deep impression in me.

This incident happened while I was in JC and it was between me and an "ex-good friend" whom I shall name Ellen. I belonged to a clique of 5 with 4 other friends (inclusive of Ellen) and I shall name the 3 other friends Fion, Gina and Helen.

The problem with having a clique of odd number is that one will always be left out because the others will always be in pairs. Say for eg, taking a bus and going for lab sessions. So needless to say, I was the one who often got left out. To add on, E, F, G and H were considered high-profiled in school. So obviously being the low profiled one, I often felt left out while I was with them.

So the incident happened when Ellen who was attached then, had a crush on this guy from another class, whom had a thing going on for Ellen too. Not wanting the guy to lose interest in her, she decided that it was best not to say anything about her boyfriend then, and that included not letting him know that she was attached.

On that fateful day, I was chatting with a dance mate over some random stuff and chanced upon the topic on Ellen and the guy. I had a slip of tongue and leaked out Ellen's status. It was only then did I realise I had just done something "dreadful". I instantly "begged" my friend to not breathe a word out because that guy happened to be her friend as well.

Feeling guilty, I confessed to Ellen later that night about the incident and apologised profusely. She got angry even though I had apologised and assured her that my dance mate would not breathe a word out. She hung up on me and refused to talk to me. I didn’t join the clique the next day in school because I knew I would be out casted. Fion, Gina and Helen did not make any effort to get me to join them. I know things would be different if it was either F, G or H who spilled the beans. They're after all the high profiled ones in school.

So that's all our friendship was worth.

I did not bother to confront her because I knew there was no use. I made no attempts to salvage the friendship either because I knew she did not cherish the friendship we had. It may be my fault on my end, but I did not feel that there wasn’t a need to go to the extremes.

However, I did question myself about whether I made the right choice by confessing to her. If I had just pretended that nothing happened, would we still be friends now? On the other hand, if something as trivial as this can break up the friendship, would some other event break up the friendship if not for the former?

And to end off, here’s an interesting quote. “You cannot say you've lost a friend. If a friendship is capable of ending, it is because it never existed." How true is this?

Effective Communication - The Key to Success

Effective communication. There is so much that one can talk about with regards to that topic but yet as this is not an essay that's to be written, it's best that I focus on just a few points of effective communication.

For that, I went online to do some research about effective communication and miscommunication and then came across this rather interesting shot that I would like to share with the class.

(click to enlarge)

Effective communication? No. Miscommunication? Definitely.

Communication has made its stand as an important process since the ancient times and so has it in this 21st century. The only difference now between now and then is the means of communication. Through communication, we transfer information to another party through various means.

In this era, we practise communication through our verbal means such as speaking, singing and even by the tone of voice as well as non verbal physical means, such as body language, eye contact, sign language and even writing.

So why is it so important that we need to know about effective communication? It isn't just any form of communication but rather, a two-way process - sending the right message that is also being correctly received and understood by the other person.

It may seem like an easy process that every one of us practice every day but it is precisely because it is seen as a easy task to do, that we often underestimate the importance and difficulty of effective communication.

Take the above image for example, a message that was full of different points was eventually toned down to a completely distorted one with no existence of the actual meaning. We can see how important it is for us to practise effective communication in order to avoid situations like these.

In my perspective, I think that the one important aspect that contributes to effective communication is the right tone that is being used when communicating. Other than the process of transmitting the right message word for word, I think that the tone that is used when speaking plays a rather huge role in effective communication.

I have this problem of not being able to control my emotions and feelings well and that really affects the way I speak to people sometimes. For example, I may just want to ask a very casual and harmless question like “What are you doing later?” but that that may turn out to be a hostile question if I were to ask it in an irritated tone just because I wasn’t feeling good at that point of time. I know that this is a huge problem because I am really sensitive to emotions expressed by the people around me. Though I know that they may be feeling down or moody, the tone of their speech will still affect me if it’s a negative tone. Knowing how it may affect people, all the more I ought to change and overcome this weakness of mine.

Having taken a module “Dynamics of Interpersonal Effectiveness” 2 semesters back, I have learnt a lot more on effective communication, but still, changes takes time and though I have toned down quite a bit with regards to the problem above, I’m still working on it to fully overcome the weakness.

No one likes miscommunications. I believe that effective communication makes one a successful person. There may be barriers to effective communication, but by overcoming them, I’m sure we'll all be one step closer to being successful persons.