how does our past experiences affect the way we understand, handle and react to different people and different situations.
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Because of the experiences that people go through in life, they develop certain deep-seated beliefs, needs and ways of thinking. In order to fulfil their needs, they develop certain personality traits. ... Contrary to popular belief, we can train ourselves to develop any kind of personality that we want.
Self-reflection is turning our attention inward to consider what we are feeling at a given moment, why we acted in such a way, and how our past experiences have shaped us. ... Reflecting on a similar situation we've experienced makes it easier to understand another person and can result in compassion for their plight.
that's how our past experiences affects.
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Have you ever told a friend experiencing a troubling situation “I know exactly how you feel”?
This empathic response is usually driven by a connection we’ve made with our own similar experiences. Having “been there”, we believe we know what it’s like to be them. But do we really?
During his presidency, Barack Obama often spoke of the ability to “recognise ourselves in each other”. Much earlier, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1859:
A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.
Both quotes reflect themes psychologists have grappled with for much of the discipline’s existence. That is, how we come to understand and process challenging experiences such as relationship breakdowns, loss of loved ones or interpersonal conflicts, and to what extent we can use these experiences to understand others going through similar things.
In order to address these issues, we need to consider the ways we think about ourselves (“self-reflection”) and the ways we think about others (“perspective taking”).
How do we understand others?
Self-reflection is turning our attention inward to consider what we are feeling at a given moment, why we acted in such a way, and how our past experiences have shaped us. Surprisingly, we don’t reflect on inner experiences as often as might be expected, with our environment usually the focus of attention.
Perspective taking allows us to consider what it’s like to be in someone else’s situation and to empathise with their experiences. We do this every day, such as when we predict how a driver in the next lane with a different field of vision will behave, or when we console a friend who is discussing their misfortunes.
One of the main ways we try to understand another person’s experiences is to imagine ourselves in their place and to use our experiences of love and loss to connect with their situation. This process has a neurological basis: brain regions activated when we focus on our own point of view are also activated when considering that of another person.