Personal Perception Questions and Answers

• Can I think of examples from my own life in which my views of myself have been shaped by the views of my parents, friends, or teachers?     

One of the biggest views that I have of myself stems from a view that my mother had of me. Independency. My mother looked at me as an independent child, an independent teenager, and as an independent adult. She allowed her own life events to shape her perception of how I should be to such a degree that she superimposed independency on me to what she will today say “is to a fault”. Meaning that her views of how I should be were so strong that I followed the path she encouraged me to take so hard and so well that I will not let myself be dependent on anyone for anything so much so that I have theoretically isolated myself from many aspects of life.

• Or by way of community and culture in which I lived?

            I do not really remember being affiliated with any sort of community and my culture is a white girl growing up in North America, more specifically Pittsburgh Pa during the 1980s and ’90s with a very broken home and broken extended family. My culture may have had traditions when I was younger but none that mattered enough to be followed throughout my life and I didn’t attach myself to any specific group in school or outside of school because nothing seemed to fit with how I thought, which was typically more profoundly than that of the company I did end up keeping (downward social comparison). And oddly, because apparently so many people do see the world racially or otherwise separated, I never saw groups or individuals as anything but people, despite that I knew what prejudice was, older people in my extended family were, but it never resonated with me. People just seemed different shades of sun-baked to me, because logically that’s all race is, the amount of sun your heritage got due to its original location. So there weren’t communities to join or cultures to really submerge myself into cause I looked at everything differently. I mean isn’t a culture really on a set of traditions that a family comes up with that becomes widespread as more people are born into or become part of a certain family line that started the tradition, to begin with.    

• Can I think of an example in which I influenced someone else’s self-views?

            I put my ex through rehab because I influenced his thinking just enough that he looked at himself and admitted he had a problem and then wholeheartedly, for himself, looked for help to change what he realized he needed help for. He thanked me in the end for standing by him and influencing him to think better of himself and has been sober and clean for over 5 years now.  

• Can I think of a couple of ways to get a friend of mine, who needs it, a confidence boost?

            Find them a hobby that interests them so that they can feel full-filled and accomplished. X-Box, the official hobby of postal employees, is not a hobby and I am trying to make them realize that.