The conversation that arises when someone makes the statement "born this way", is the conversation of nature vs nurture. Nature vs nurture is a classic conversation in the world of psychology.
In my opinion, everything we do in life is from a "nurture" point of view. I believe that if two identical twins were raised exactly the same, with ALL of the exact same external inputs, they would turn out making almost exactly the same life decisions. Yet, this never happens. Every single person faces different external situations at some point in their lives leading them to having different internal reflection which eventually leads them back to having different external responses in life.
Needless to say, if we recognize this patter we can pretty heavily influence the output of our lives. We are no longer trapped responding to life the way we were raised. Now, if we recognize our life response and we wish, or know, a better way to respond to a situation we can slowly adapt into that response. The biggest hurdle we face is breaking our old habits. Our trained responses are the deepest and hardest habits to break in our life. This is what most people would consider their "personality" to be made up of. Our personality is the internal response we have to our external situation without much though. Yet, when we think about our response we begin to mold and shape a better response. This is a good process if you can recognize the "best way you see fit" to responding to a situation. This is a bad process if you don't know how you would like to best respond.
An example of this would be eating fast food. At first instinct I would like to eat fast food. You could argue that eating fast food has become part of my personality. Yet, after more consideration I realize that eating fast food is not the healthiest choice I can make for my life. If I truly want to eat healthier and remove fast food from my life, I will push myself into denying fast food so often that it becomes habit to not want fast food (and hopefully I develop the habit of eating healthy in it's place). This ability to cognitively alter our internal processes is why I believe fully in a "nurture" world view.
Nurture brings power and control for everyone to have ownership of their lives. To fully embrace this lifestyle you must take responsibility for everything. If you like fast food, own the fact that you like fast food. Living a life believing that we were simply just born into any form of thinking happens to people far too often. Not learning to deal with your emotions is a stumbling block that too many young adults deal with. Adopting at least a partial nurture point of view will help to better ground ones self for the rest of their lives.
In my opinion, everything we do in life is from a "nurture" point of view. I believe that if two identical twins were raised exactly the same, with ALL of the exact same external inputs, they would turn out making almost exactly the same life decisions. Yet, this never happens. Every single person faces different external situations at some point in their lives leading them to having different internal reflection which eventually leads them back to having different external responses in life.
Needless to say, if we recognize this patter we can pretty heavily influence the output of our lives. We are no longer trapped responding to life the way we were raised. Now, if we recognize our life response and we wish, or know, a better way to respond to a situation we can slowly adapt into that response. The biggest hurdle we face is breaking our old habits. Our trained responses are the deepest and hardest habits to break in our life. This is what most people would consider their "personality" to be made up of. Our personality is the internal response we have to our external situation without much though. Yet, when we think about our response we begin to mold and shape a better response. This is a good process if you can recognize the "best way you see fit" to responding to a situation. This is a bad process if you don't know how you would like to best respond.
An example of this would be eating fast food. At first instinct I would like to eat fast food. You could argue that eating fast food has become part of my personality. Yet, after more consideration I realize that eating fast food is not the healthiest choice I can make for my life. If I truly want to eat healthier and remove fast food from my life, I will push myself into denying fast food so often that it becomes habit to not want fast food (and hopefully I develop the habit of eating healthy in it's place). This ability to cognitively alter our internal processes is why I believe fully in a "nurture" world view.
Nurture brings power and control for everyone to have ownership of their lives. To fully embrace this lifestyle you must take responsibility for everything. If you like fast food, own the fact that you like fast food. Living a life believing that we were simply just born into any form of thinking happens to people far too often. Not learning to deal with your emotions is a stumbling block that too many young adults deal with. Adopting at least a partial nurture point of view will help to better ground ones self for the rest of their lives.
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