Nature VS Nurture VS Mindset


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What do you feel has the biggest capability to drive and influence your life? The things you're born with from a genetic level...everything you inherited, the fundamental you? How you were raised, how your childhood developed and affected your view on things, things you were taught by your parents and teachers etc? The way you get yourself motivated, how you see things, your attitude towards life, how much of your ability you utilize on a day to day basis?

I've been thinking about this some recently. Why certain people seem to be able to just excel at anything they put themselves up to. How people with more limited ability can be making more of themselves than someone who preforms better than them at X activity. Let's hear some thoughts on it.

I'm a firm believer in attitude. It seems to be able to override the former two. I feel for most cases, you can be taught anything and brought up in any fashion, but you can change yourself through attitude and perception that differs from those who taught you. As far as genetics and such go, they can limit you in certain fashions, but someone with bad genetics and good attitude will excel more than someone who's the opposite, IMO. If you have both, then more power to you.

EDIT: The poll didn't get posted. Could a mod add a poll with the following options?

Which do you feel plays the biggest role in a persons life?

1. Upbringing, values learned in childhood

2. Genetics and inherited abilities

3. Attitude and mindset

4. Depends On The Person

5. Other

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I don't think "depends on the person" is a good option, as the three options in front of it make up the person. I also think your mindset is a product of nature and nurture.

Anyway, I think a combination of the two, nature and nurture, make up your personality. Genetics predispose you to certain traits and abilities and then your environment will influence those and how you think about and react to them.

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I don't think "depends on the person" is a good option, as the three options in front of it make up the person. I also think your mindset is a product of nature and nurture.

Anyway, I think a combination of the two, nature and nurture, make up your personality. Genetics predispose you to certain traits and abilities and then your environment will influence those and how you think about and react to them.

Thinking about my question, it is a little off. None of us can control how much our genetics affect us really. Through attitude we can control, to a degree, how much certain aspects of our genetics and our upbringing will affect us. But which of these three forces is going to be the most responsible for what we do? Someone who's practiced basketball for a long time got better through his attitude and mindset. Someone who picked up a basketball and felt right at home did it moreso by genetics. What the poll is for is to ask each of you which you feel has the biggest influence on you and capability to effect your life? Your genetic, or "God Given" ability, your childhood and how you were raised, or you you view things day to day and perceive the things around you, how you motivate yourself day to day and so forth.

I think in myself I have a lot of genetic ability and an intense attitude about the world in general. I see a certain upbringing I had and how it affects me to this day. All of these things influence me in certain ways. I've lived a somewhat spoiled life, though not as lavish as some, I feel it was enough to make arrogance more dominant in me, something I've been due to nature. I see this and through altering my perception and attitude I try to undue these things, which is a way my attitude is affecting this. Through genetics I see a lot of natural ability in myself to pick up on things quickly....football, basketball, skateboarding, guitar, videogames, mathmatical concepts, foreign languages and so forth. My attitude and motivation determines how much I excel in these things, my genetics partially determine how much I'll need to practice, how difficult new tasks in the activities will be to learn and so forth. Someone else with worse genes coud struggle twice as hard in accomplishing 1/4th of what I do in the same timeframe for instance, and that would be an example of genetics giving me an advantadge over him. This comes into more of a moral sense than scientific, but I've been trying to see these things in my life, see when something I do good or bad is more to genetics and nature than attitude and I give it less attention. If I pick up guitar quickly, so be it....I'll have little respect for myself in regards to guitar playing if I rely on just my natural ability and do not drive myself forth with attitude to excel. I respect a person who's put forth effort more than someone who's done well because of their natural ability. I think the world in general needs to be less concerned with how you preform compared to another person and moreso with how you preform given you maximum ability in any given area. Me not being content with learning what most people learn on guitar in my first month, but pushing beyond that because I know I'm capable of excelling in that respect. On the flipside, if you've been given less natural ability, don't expect yourself to preform on the same level as someone else given the same time and amount of practice, simply expect yourself to push as far as your capabilities allow rather than focusing on the comparison. Maybe in a given task I won't ever excel the way you or someone else can, but as lon gas I'm applying myself the same amount as that person, I don't think I should really care.

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