Making of a person
Is a person really independent? Or is that just an illusion he creates to satisfy an ego? Is a person solely responsible for what he is today and what has done in the past? Or does some of the credit or blame go to people around him mainly his family, friends and colleagues. How much of of me is made up of other people? I live, how many people live inside me.
What if a person is full of bitterness? What if he is full of love? What if he is full of both? Will people around him also become bitter? Or full of love? Will people around him want to give something of theirs to him? Or will they shoo him away?
I wonder how much of me is other people and how much of the people around me is me.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 6:26 am and is filed under thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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on May 18, 2007 at 6:31 pm Krakoosh wrote:
Shad Helmstetter has the answer Good post Varun. You have just dipped your fingers into what is the most heavily studied subjects in the field of personal development and developmental psychology.
A very succinct answer to your post would be that the 80-20 rule applies here too. 80% of what we and our thoughts/opinions and belief system are made up of will come from the people around us. This happens before we are 5 years old. The remaining 20% will develop as a result of our own interpretation, understanding and application of the belief systems we are around as we grow older and mentally mature.
Who we are is the product of the books we read, the people we associate with and the CDs we listen to. And this is the golden rule in developmental and/or human psychology.
I have been a BIG fan of Shad Helmstetter’s books who has scientifically studied the effects of our surroundings on us as individuals. The words we hear, what our loved ones tell us, what we read and what we see - every instance actually makes a physical “mark” on/in the brain. The more positive instances (or marks) in your brain - the more positive your outlook towards life. The more negative marks in the brain - the more irritable/frustrated/rude and selfish the individual and his outlook towards life will be.
His book “What to say when you talk to yourself” is the one of the best I’ve read that so simply and accurately combines scientific knowledge with psychology.
on February 28, 2008 at 9:14 pm Prude wrote:
I tried phrasing my comment here several times…there are too many facets to this. I think I’ll reserve this for our coffee table.
But I remember this quote which I thought would make sense here:
“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace