What To Do If You Could Relive Your Life
Do genes influence personality?
Yes and no!
The “yes” part is easy to explain. The answer is DNA. The “no” part will be revealed in a moment.
“If I only had thought about…..”
“If I had done that instead….”
“Why didn’t I think about that….”
“What a fool I was….”
Does it sound familiar? Well, it does for everyone in one way or another. Your life is a long lane of decisions. Some decisions are small and of less importance while others are crucial and can have an enormous and even decisive impact on how your life will be.
There is no doubt about that the DNA influences to establish your personality, but the tricky thing scientifics are trying to find out is how much weight to the personality can be earmarked by your genetic composition. So, let’s make it easy and just recognize that the DNA has an influence on your personality and as you can’t make any changes in your DNA, why to bother about it. Instead, let’s focus on the other part which is environment related.
As a born baby, we are all dependent on our parents or whoever has the tutorial responsibility. As we grow, we start to get experiences of all kinds. The outcome of the experience has a tremendous impact on the qualification of the experience. Either it could be a negative or a positive experience. Positive experiences we would like to repeat, and it will be completely the opposite for negative experiences.
In your early childhood when you still lack the knowledge to combine the negative and positive experiences, the foundation of your personality will be developed. Your personality can be changed at a later stage in your life, influenced by strong environmental circumstances, but the foundation from your childhood will never disappear entirely.
As a parent, you have a tremendous responsibility as you directly will be partly responsible for the development of your child’s personality.
Go back as much as you can in life and try to identify the most important behaviours and statements made by your parents, and which you would say have had a significant influence on your personality and your way of thinking and acting.
To make the exercise easier and more interesting, divide the task into different parts, for example:
Moral – I was educated throughout my whole childhood about what was right, and what was wrong, and I firmly believe that it has followed me as one of my strongest alliance, and without any doubt, I am grateful to identify a high level of moral as part of my personality.
Social interactions – As a child I was lulled into a kind of authority thinking like, adults first and children after that, teachers are authorities, and students shouldn’t question, and so on. This education made me respectful but at he same time introvert.
Education & Careers – Get a university degree, search for a job in the corporate world and make your living. This way of educating your children was probably the only way of trying getting your children on a good track. I don’t blame my parents for that. It was the postwar time and as a typical baby boomer, I was pushed into this way of thinking.
You can create as many sub-groups you want. It’s up to you and what you consider important in your personal development as a person. The three groups above are the groups that I consider having had the most impact in my life. Whatever your group configuration will be, I’m pretty sure that your education and career will be covered in some way or another.
Fireman, police, air pilot, astronaut, flight attendant….. do you remember? We all have gone through this phase in life when passion drove most of your answers. I do agree that we were too young to balance the passion with other realities. In the next phase, it was quite common to stick to a profession holding by your dad or mom, as we looked up to them as our personal “idols”.
Time has changed and if back by then the path to go was:
“Go for a job that will bring in money enough to sustain yourself and your family”,
the road we go towards today is more like:
“Work with something that you are passionate to do, and the rest will be solved by itself”.
Even if I tried to become a pilot in the Swedish Airforce and failed in the test due to a knee problem, and got the opportunity to try something I felt passionate for at that time, I ended up with a university degree in economics and business administration. The fact that my dad was a businessman….could it be a reason to my career?
For sure my dad had an influence, but to what degree…?
The DNA that we had in common could be scientifically proven, but the personality not traceable to the DNA? Well, we can only guess and will never know. The search for the answer will be as difficult as trying to find the correct 25 sand grains in a ton of sand. You know they are there, but you can’t identify them.
The career we chose in life is important, and you can be more or less passionate about what you are doing. However, how many people do you know who say:
“Yes, finally it’s Monday tomorrow so I can start working again”.
Or, have you ever heard about somebody who on their death bed ever said:
“I wish I’d spent more time in the office”?
Passion first….and when you do something you love,
……..the rest of the bricks will automatically fall in place.
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