Which event had a big impact on your personality?

[Rockinruby]

Which event in your life had the biggest impact on your personality?

Do you notice events from your past still resonate and impact your actions/personality currently?

 

[kenny]

Two, actually.
Psychoanalysis and EST.

Yes, my past affects my present.
How can it not?

... but the above two things have drastically reduced the the ability of worst of my past to ruin my present.

 

[Ally T]

My father's death when I was 27. A sudden diagnosis of Leukaemia followed by aggressive treatment, which put him in remission after 4 weeks, to then watch multiple strokes hit & leave him a vegetable 24 hours later. After 5 days of bedside vigil, my family made the inevitable decision regarding life support, and we're all with him when he took his last breath.

It lead me to anxiety in a BIG way. Ten years on, I began hypnotherapy as my life was being controlled by my worries, and it has hugely helped, but I am not the carefree happy go lucky girl I once was. I wouldn't wish that moment on my worst enemy & even just recalling it, such as now, can spring tears & a knot in my stomach instantly. I hope & pray my own children never have to experience that twisting, helpless pain

 

[dk168]

An event happened when I was 15 when I was at boarding school - it taught me to have the courage to stand up and be counted.

DK

 

[kenny]

My birth.

 

[dk168]

An event at home shortly before I came to UK to study when I was 14, taught me to be financially independent and not to rely on another person to provide for me.

DK

 

[packrat]

I don't think I could point to any one specific thing.

 

[sarahb]

For me, the single most influencing factor would undoubtably have to be growing up in a military family. It (the military way of life) reinforced the values/ethics we grew up with and were taught as children. Moving every few years provided an education that no book nor classroom could of ever afforded. Moving also reinforced to me how just incredibly fortunate we are here in this country & to be truly grateful for the way of life we have here in the US. Many of you may read this and think oh! the US has many problems, & yes it does, but inspite of the issues here, we are blessed with freedom & the circumstances freedom allows to build a life. The instructive influence of being a military brat really shaped the 'who I am' in countless ways. My cup is always half full.

 

[Puppmom]

Having a child at 17. I wasn't even old enough to file for legal custody of her. Taught me how to suck it up, move along and choose happiness. Squashed any sense of entitlement I ever had.

 

[sonnyjane]

Two things.

1) Meeting and marrying my husband. To say I was a "wild child" before that would be an understatement. I REALLY settled down.

2) Quitting a job a few years ago that paid well, had great benefits, but made me miserable and went against my ethics. Walking away from that taught me that there's no need to ever do a job that you don't morally agree with. You can live on less money - life's too short to be unhappy.

 

[AprilBaby]

The death of my mother when I was 5.

 

[missy]

I don't think any event has had a big impact on my personality per se as that is pretty much fixed and I feel my personality has been my personality since as far as I can remember. As Kenny wrote probably from birth as I remember my mom saying I was always this way from when I was a baby. Haha she did not mean that as a compliment though.

However the fact that I am dealing with a few autoimmune diseases that impact how I feel and how I look has had a big impact in certain respects, during certain times.

I am by nature a very outgoing and friendly person and during certain times (i.e. when I am having a flare) I get more withdrawn and less likely to go out of my way and chat with people and less likely to want to be out and about. It has made me less extroverted during the times I am not feeling well or looking well and usually they coincide.

However I am still who I am so that hasn't changed. And when I am feeling well and looking good I go right back to who I really am-friendly, helpful and outgoing but I do become way more self conscious when I am not doing well.


I asked my dh this same question and he said the event that had a big impact on him was 9/11. He said it was a catastrophic failure of our government. They had the necessary info on Bin Laden and that an attack was coming and they failed us. Before 9/11 people never thought a catastrophic event such as this could ever happen on American soil and it has forever changed the way he views government. They didn't keep us safe and they could have as they had the info beforehand.

 

[girlyglam]

Interesting question! Like Missy, I'm not sure there's a single event that has significantly impacted my personality. However, the event that has probably most greatly impacted my current life was my friend's death. I spoke about it a bit in another post. She died when we were both 24 from cancer, and a huge portion of the things I currently do and love can be traced back to that.

I had been laid off a month before she passed and had been looking for another editorial job, but afterwards, I decided to go back to school instead - partly because I truly couldn't envision going back into a new working environment and acting normal anytime soon and partly because I wanted to try and do something more meaningful with my life. She had also been my roommate at the time, so when she passed, I moved in with our mutual best friend - something that in retrospect was really helpful to both of us at the time. When I got my grad school acceptance letters, I ended up choosing the school that wouldn't require me to move again (even though the other one gave me a huge scholarship) - and that choice was for a number of reason (better program with more options) but was also largely influenced by the fact that I just wasn't in a place where I felt I could leave my best friend and start over. I was also deeply impacted by how much she had loved life and wanted to live, which really pushed me to do things I had always wanted to do but pushed aside due to what I perceived as a lack of time or money. this led me to pole dancing and flying trapeze, and eventually aerial rope and silks, and I truly can't imagine my life without pole and aerials now. Grad school led me to what is now one of my closest friend groups (even though I don't work in the field I studied), and trapeze eventually led me to my current job, where I've been for the past 3 years (but no, I don't work in the circus). In a weird way, her passing also led me to my fiance...he had actually been dating her at the time, so there's a bunch of emotions that come with that fact, but I believe part of what drew us together initially was that we both got it without having to talk about it all the time.

All these things - pole, aerials, my job, my friends, my fiance - they huge things that make up my life right now, and I deeply love and treasure them. I definitely see her passing as a crossroads in my life, and I often think of things in terms of before and after her death. If I'm being completely honest, in many ways I am happier now that I was before, which I feel horrible saying. I just remember having this overwhelming feeling after she died how horribly unfair it was because of how much she loved life and had wanted to live, and this feeling that I really had to step up, live fiercely, and appreciate my life because she no longer could. That being said though, if it was possible, I would give it all up to have her back - in my alternate world where this is possible, I would have still come to pole, aerials, my grad school friends, and love (albeit not with my current fiance)...just in a different way than what happened in reality. Of course, that world doesn't actually exist, and the fact is that it is her passing that led me, however, indirectly, to these things so I would definitely have to say it stands out as a hugely impactful event in my life.