Past Experiences

Lifestyle Relationships
1

How much do you believe that past experiences can be a reason for someone’s personality?

How much do you believe that someone’s behavior has something to do with past?

I have seen people contemplating whether a thief, molester or a common thug became who he/she is because of their past experiences. People believe that something in their past caused them to react in this manner.

How much past predicts our future?

2

Re: Past Experiences

I'm a firm believer that your past predicts the way your future will be, unless you've had a life-altering experience.

3

Re: Past Experiences

circumstances and events in peoples lives will inevitably affect their future and perhaps the ppl themselves, it depends on wht has happened to them and ihow it has psychologically affected them
I find that when things happen to ppl more so in bad events those are psychologically weak change as people, becum quieter more reserved, bitter et.c this is of course not always the case though

4

Re: Past Experiences

I believe that your long term past experiences do effect your present personality. However, I generally do not believe that a singular bad experience in the past can have a major effect on the personality. Also after a certain age, when one matures up, ones personality should not remain dependent on past experiences. Everyone has the power to improves their personalities.

I also believe that effect of past bad experience on ones personality is strongly dependent on the outlook of that experience in the current society that person lives in.

5

Re: Past Experiences

Totally agree!!

6

Re: Past Experiences

Your past does affect you but one cannot justify his criminal tendencies by attributing them to the ill-treatment meted out to him in the past.

7

Re: Past Experiences

i think it has a great impact on one's personality

8

Re: Past Experiences

It depends alot on the "way of thinking" of a person and how he percieves any event in his life. Does he let it effect him so much that he is forced to jump to a decision/conclusion based on generalization or he only learns to not repeat any mistake and move on with positive thinking.

  1. People with strong personalities and positive thinking would learn from their past experiences and remain careful/ ready to face similar situations in future, but would never let them TOTALLY change their nature and personality for ever. Intense experiences might have a strong impact on their emotions but they don't let them effect their beliefs and principles in life.

Though they might do some useful ammendents in their reaction in accordance with the nature of the circumstances in order to not repeat the mistakes they might have committed earlier in their life.

On the OTHER hand

  1. People with weak personalities and negative thinking would jump to conclusions with complete generalization on the basis of any particular past experience which might not be applicable to alot of other situations, thus they might also try to change their nature and personality according to the situations they come across in life.

Usually such people have no firm beliefs and principles but have multi personalities which changes with a change in situation in terms of whichever benefits them the most.

9

Re: Past Experiences

Uhm, we're going back to the whole nature vs. nurture argument. A person's personality has a whole lot to do with his past experiences and a whole lot to do with their predispositions. There are volumes written on this subject.

10

Re: Past Experiences

I was watching Dateline NBC. In one story a hooker was arrested than she started telling her life story. In short, she was molested as a kid by her father, which made her loose respect for herself that lead to her becoming a prostitute.

Another story where a student who got raped in college, she was a virgin. At that time she did not press any charges, 21 years later her attacker contacted and apologized to her. She went to court. All those years, she had that experience with her, bitter and wanted some justice.

The difference between these two is that one became a prostitute, other went on to have a career and family.

11

Re: Past Experiences

Two raw diamonds:

  1. The artificial one when put in fire loses it's qualities and shine.

  2. The real one comes out of the fire purer & more shining than before.

12

Re: Past Experiences

Dude, where do you pull some of this crap out of?

13

Re: Past Experiences

Agreed. There is an inner voice called "Zameer" which nature has blessed to everyone. Some people sincerely listen to it sooner or later in life, no matter how many hardships and patience they have to go through to satisfy their inner voice of TRUTH.

While others keep decieving themselves with shortcuts to immoral pleasure to satisfy their thirst from sources which are like mirage in a desert, even after reaching maturity, for so long that when they realize their wrong decisions, they have gone too far to be able to "easily" return to the right path.

14

Re: Past Experiences

I forgot to mention that no right step can ever be taken without the grace and blessings of Allah, if anyone sincerely seeks/prays for it or Allah HIMSELF bestows it upon anyone with HIS mercy and blessings.

Human is too weak to fight against any trouble on his own, but strength and wisdom from Allah makes him strong

15

Re: Past Experiences

I believe, what we call "Zameer" is a learned behavior and not instinctive behavior.

16

Re: Past Experiences

Yes! That is true but that does not mean that we have discovered all the truth. Past experiences and their effect on personality is a very complex phenomenon, with lot more to it then just the experience itself.