Life Experiences Are What Makes a Persons Personality
An individuals experiences, past and present provide a significant basis for the type of person they will become. Relationships that are established during childhood and adolescence are important for the shaping of someone's personality, as most personality development occurs in the early stages of life. Experiences that someone must deal with in the present sense also contributes to their personality. Dominick Birdsey in Wally Lambs novel I Know This Much Is True, suffered his entire life experiencing every emotion humanly possible in his current stretch of forty five years. The sad and stressful episodes of his life began to take their toll sending Dominick began to grow into a depression and question his reason for living.
Dominick Birdsey, his twin brother Thomas, his mother Connie, and stepfather Ray, "Ray is not our real father. We don't know who our real father is. I don't even know if Ma knows." (91) live in Connecticut. Dominick and Thomas had to form an alliance to stand up to Ray, as he had a tendency to use his belt rather than words to punish. He was extremely strict, clearly in charge of the house, and showed little or no emotion, not even towards his wife. As a child of about eight years old, Ray has Dominick and his brother believing that part of being a man is not showing emotion, so the two grow up as little boys feeling very lonely, resulting in a lonely adulthood. The way Dominick remembers his childhood is feeling obligated to frequently rescue his brother from Ray's abuse. Ray was always much harder on Thomas as he felt he was a mamma's boy and had to be toughened up. "These days they called Ray's kind of 'toughening up' child abuse." (63) D...
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...realize that all they have is each other. Ray regrets not expressing love towards both his wife and his sons and vows to grow old with Dominick and be the best father he knows how to be for the remainder of his life.
Dominick Birdsey was clearly the stronger twin. All his life, from a child to a middle aged man, he had to take care of someone, namely his brother Thomas. It is very difficult to be constantly giving and getting nothing in return as such was the case with Dominick. Finally, to be showed love by Ray, (the one man who Dominick thought was incapable of love) Dominick accomplished a sense of rest and settlement. Perhaps the reason why Dominick was so strong was because he had to be, as people were dependent on him. His childhood and his everyday battles made him the person that he thought he would never become. He was finally in control of his life.
The effect of an individual 's personal experience may be one of the controlling factors of their life. In the short story “The Hand”, Yves Theriault presents the idea of the importance of an individual 's personal experience, and the effects of these experiences on their life. Yves shows how these personal experiences are important to one’s life, because it is in control of how an individual will change, and how it will develop their character and personality. This is shown by the character Géron, where one event in his life changed a personality trait that he had for most of his life. Many of my personal experiences could relate to Géron’s incident, where a small event had a large impact in my life, and how the story of our life is influenced
Torres uses the words like “mud” and “horseshit” to reveal how low and unwanted the eldest son feels. When we think of “mud” or “horseshit”, our first reaction would be to step over it or avoid the area that contains it at all costs. In this case, the people avoiding the “horseshit” are their parents. Not only that, but Torres includes the statement “we’re on our own” to further depict how neglectful the parents have been to their sons. Being the oldest, Manny is considered to be the responsible on because it states that., “Paps assumed it was all Manny’s idea because Manny was the oldest and because it was, actually, all Manny’s idea. He didn’t wait to get home but beat Manny right there in the field” (Torres83). Readers can infer that no matter what happens, Manny will always be the father’s “punching bag” whenever the boys would do something bad, which makes him feel unworthy as well. Then there’s Joel, the middle child. In most families, the middle child is never really glorified. It is as if they are a filler or some sort because the eldest child will always be praised for being head of the sibling clan, the youngest can be deemed the “favorite”, while the middle child is just there. Torres shows this by not giving readers the full Joel. Readers don’t know how Joel feels because, he wasn’t taught how to express his emotions, which parents should teach their child. Finally, there is Mijo; the youngest. Mijo,
The debate of nature vs. nurture still continues today in the world of psychology. The effects of an individual’s genetics and the effects of their environment on their personality and actions is an age old debate that is still inconclusive. However, it is evident that both sides of the argument carry some form of the truth. It can be contended that the major characteristics of an individual are formed by their environment, more specifically, their past experiences. An individual’s past moulds and shapes their identity, if they do not make an effort to move on from it. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows that clinging on to the past prevents individuals from fully experiencing the present, eventually leading to resentment, dissatisfaction, and misjudgements.
Erikson believed that personality development happens over the entire course of a persons life. He believed that personality develops in a series of stages. At each stage, challenges are faced and the outcome depends on how people handles these challenges. Erikson’s theory describes the impact of social experiences across the whole lifespan.
Carlitos: Jimmy and Isabelle's son came into the world at a disadvantage and in some ways his heartache basically consisted of anger from both parents.
Both Erik Erikson’s (1963) theory and Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby (1973) theory support the idea that early life experiences impact the person across their lifespan. Both theories believe that personality begins to develop from a young age and therefore occurrences in early life can have lasting impacts on the developmental of an individual. An individual’s social and psychological development is significantly influenced by early life and childhood experiences. The experiences an individual has as a child impacts on the development of social skills, social behaviours, morals and values of an individual.
Defining a person is not as easy as looking through a dictionary. Inferring, thinking, and a thoughtful mind are all required in illustrating the true person. The shaping of one’s identity is all based on events that happen to a person. Many sources of literature prove that the major aspect in shaping one’s identity is memories. In literature, they include the fundamentals of memories in their morals. The importance of memories is significantly shown in The Outsiders when Johnny acts differently because of his abusive childhood; in S.E. Hinton’s Letter, when she talks about how her wish of becoming a writer became her future and her true identity; and Julian Baggini’s lecture, where he directly said that memories shape who “you” are. Johnny’s abusive past and S.E.’s longing for a life away from social struggles all shaped who they later became. The uniqueness of a person’s personality is determined mainly on one’s memories.
Everything in life that we experience effects who we are as a person today. Even if we do not remember all the events that shaped a particular part of our life, we have memories of the events that we believe had the biggest impact. The types or experiences we have both positive and negative help shape us into the types of readers and writers we become.
There is so many different personalities in the world, and how boring would it be if we all acted the same. “Every society and social group has values, experiences, and understandings that are widely shaped among members but may not be endorsed by those outside of the culture or group” (Wood, 2016, p.54). This is your personal identity , which is how you choose to live your life and what you stand for. Your idenity can be shared closly with other people. However, your personality is uniquily your own, this is the way you have decided to represent your idenity (Hontoy, 2015). I learned that I am an ESTJ type, extravert (19%), sensing (12%), thinking (1%), and judging (44%). Some of the concepts that I read about my personality type I recognized in myself and some opened my eyes to new concepts about myself (Humanmetrics, 2016).
Over the course of an individual’s life there are many traits acquired which are things that contribute to the way he or she interacts with others, overall these traits help with the development of one’s personality. Character traits or qualities make up a person, whether it's their personality or attitude or the way they portray themselves to others. Every person individually possess traits and qualities that not only describe, but define them making every person different. Many of the admirable traits that I possess make me the man that I am today, contributing to my interactions with others and the career path I intend to pursue. Throughout my life, many events have revealed my true character traits which include determination, optimism, and faith.
That one’s self are built off of experiences that come from events that have taken place over a period of time.
Personality is the study of an individual’s unique and relatively stable patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time and across situations and it is what distinguishes one individual from another. In the past changes in personality were thought to have only occurred in the developmental stages of childhood and solidifies in adolescence. After the teenage years it was thought to be set like plaster or the change seen to be inconsequential or absent( Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, 2003). However, recent studies have suggested that changes in personality traits continue to occur throughout an individual’s lifespan due to multiple reasons.
The concept of personality has numerous definitions (Fatahi, Moradi, & Kashani-Vahid, 2016). Schultz and Schultz (2009), define personality in its broad sense as the manner of an individual’s behaviour in different situations. This essay explores the nature of personality, with the intention of highlighting its flexibility. The results of numerous empirical research studies are examined in order to investigate if, and how personality changes over time. It will be argued that an individual’s personality has the ability to change throughout their life.
Personality is determined both by current experiences and, as the original psychoanalytic theory proposed, by early life experiences
According to my own life experience, I strongly believe that early childhood experiences are very important to forge our personality over time. I grew up in a nurturing and loving environment where I always felt safe, loved and my parents always made me feel important. I was a strong-will child. I used to throw temper tantrums if things didn’t go my way. I used to be very demanding as well, my mother used to joke about my personality and she used to ask me where I had left my crown --I acted like I was a queen--. Despite of my strong-will personality, my mother’s nurturing unconditional love and attention, shaped my personality. My mother was very patient and compassionate. She used to explain things so well to make me understand why things couldn’t always be how I wanted them to be. With her help, over time, I learned how to deal with my emotions and situations and these experiences shaped my behavior and personality. The conversations we had still remain in my mind and I still think