Quotes & Sayings About How Experiences Shape Us

Are we not all shaped by our experiences? Are we not the sum of our memories? The sages of the dwarves say that just as the thousand blows of a hammer shape a blade, so to do the thousand experiences of a man shape him. — Jonathan Moeller

It's not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it's the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences. — Tony Robbins

It is our experiences in their entirety that proves to be the mold required to shape us into the person we need to be;for what is the point of life without an exceptional story of overcomed adversities? — Renee' A. Lee

All human beings have control over their own destiny. that is, after all, our purpose on this planet. not to interfere with the lives of others but to shape our own experiences. — Jessica Brody

As kids, our experiences shape our opinions of ourselves and the world around us, and that's who we become as adults. — Chris Hemsworth

We must know that when we invite people into our lives, we are not just inviting people; but we are inviting experiences into our lives, as well. The time that we will spend with the people that we welcome in, will be the time spent on creating experiences in our lives. We are not really taught this. We are not taught that attached to a person is a world, and in that world our feelings and thoughts will mingle with the feelings and thoughts of the other person. Ultimately, we shape our lives depending upon our choices of the people we take in, and also depending upon the people that we couldn't choose. People are so much more than just lumps of bones, skin, and feelings. When they said one person can change the whole world, what that means is that if you change the life of one person, you are already changing one whole world. And vice versa. So be careful. Be brave, but be careful. — C. JoyBell C.

Ideologies, however appealing, cannot shape the whole structure of perceptions and conduct unless they are embedded in daily experiences that confirm them. — Christopher Lasch

our first experiences of pleasurable solitude teach us how to be content by ourselves and shape the conditions in which we seek it. — Kate Bolick

Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear. — Ann Patchett

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I'm willing and I'm eager, and not just about my writing - I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be. — Wayne Dyer

My work is strongly rooted in place and memory, in personal, formative experiences that took shape within very different environments. — David Rockwell

If we human beings are information processing machines, reading X's & O's and translating that information into what people oh so breathlessly call "experience", & if I had not only the information but the artistry to shape that information using the computer inside my brain, then, technically speaking, was I not having all the same experiences those other people were having? — Jennifer Egan

It's wild how unexpected experiences can shape your life in ways you never saw coming. — Susane Colasanti

The theological battles of the 1920s and 1930s shaped Dad in the same way that political battles would shape the Vietnam generation in the 1960s. Passions forged in those battles became part of a personal identity that was difficult for people who did not share the passionate and polarizing experiences to understand. When — Frank Schaeffer

Nothing goes to waste on the journey of life. Both good and bad experiences shape your mind and heart for what is to come. — Leon Brown

In our system leadership is by consent, not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership. — Donald Rumsfeld

The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the Earth are the means by which you evolve. At each moment you choose the intentions that will shape your experiences and those things upon which you will focus your attention. These choices affect your evolutionary process. This is so for each person. — Gary Zukav

CENTER-OF-THE-UNIVERSE, that was me entering the workplace. And I woke up one day soon after that, struggling at the bottom of a vast ocean. But I needed that. Humbling experiences are part of growing - they help shape us and mold our character. Welcome to life. — Yay Padua-Olmedo

Freeman's theory helps to explain how love and plasticity affect each other. Plasticity allows us to develop brains so unique in response to our individual life experiences - that it is often hard to see the world as others do, to want what they want, or to cooperate. But the successful reproduction of our species requires cooperation. What nature provides, in a neuromodulator like oxytocin, is the ability for two brains in love to go through a period of heightened plasticity, allowing them to mold to each other and shape each other's intentions and perceptions. The brain for Freeman is fundamentally an organ of socialization, and so there must be a mechanism that, from time to time, undoes our tendency to become overly individualized, overly self-involved, and too self-centered. — Norman Doidge

In these days Melissa's absorbed and provoking gentleness had all the qualities of a rediscovered youth. Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared. In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental - a passion to serve. My shabby clothes - the way she picked up a dirty shirt seemed to engulf it with an overflowing solicitude; in the morning I found my razor beautifully cleaned and even the toothpaste laid upon the brush in readiness. Her care for me was a goad, provoking me to give my life some sort of shape and style that might match the simplicity of hers. Of her experiences in love she would never speak, turning from them with a weariness and distaste which suggested that they had been born of necessity rather than desire. She paid me the comlpiment of saying: "For the first time I am not afraid to be light-headed or foolish with a man". — Lawrence Durrell

Women's particular experiences continue to shape not just their points of view but their actions, in the United States and around the world. — Dee Dee Myers

As you age, you have this vast cauldron of experience to draw from. Some of the experiences are great; some of them you wish you'd never had. But all of them shape the work that you do and the person you become. It's just inevitable. — Juliet Aubrey

Our knowledge of shape and form remains, in general, a mixture of visual and of tactile experiences ... A child learns about roundness from handling a ball far more than from looking at it. — Henry Moore

In the act of writing he experiences, today, an exceptional sensual pleasure
in the feel of the pen, snug in the crook of his thumb, but even more in the feel of his hand being tugged back lightly from its course across the page by the strict, unvarying shape of the letters, the discipline of the alphabet. — J.M. Coetzee

Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden - but it's there. As we'll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain. — Gabor Mate

How would you like to live billions upon billions of lives?" Paul asked. "There's a fabric of legends for you! Think of all those experiences, the wisdom they'd bring. But wisdom tempers love, doesn't it? And it puts a new shape on hate. How — Frank Herbert

Internal and external world is interdependent. Your experiences and impressions of the outside world shape your thoughts and imagination, while making the choice and decisions, from your internal thought process, creates your physical reality. — Roshan Sharma

I used to believe that the experiences life throws at us shape us. Now I think that it's the way we cope with what life throws our way that shapes us. — Layla Hagen

As the caterpillar undergoes transformation within the cocoon before emerging as a butterfly; likewise, life experiences shape character. — Lorna Jackie Wilson

Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires ... — Elizabeth Hardwick

You are a self and an other.
Your 'others' are in part your own creation.
This in turn affects and shapes your experiences of self.
Your levels of self-awareness and self-acceptance largely shape how you perceive others. p.231 — Stephanie Dowrick

God gives people the exact experiences he wants them to have in order to shape the specific destiny he's designed for them. — Steven Furtick

All the experiences in your life- from single conversations to your broader culture- shape the microscopic details of your brain. Neurally speaking, who you are depends on where you've been. Your brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuitry- and because your experiences are unique, so are the vast detailed patterns in your neural networks. Because they continue to change your whole life, your identity is a moving target; it never reaches an endpoint. — David Eagleman

Because we are human we have a long childhood, and one of the jobs of that childhood is to sculpt our brains. We have years
about twelve of them
to draw outlines of the shape we want our sculpted brain to take. Some of the parts must be sculpted at critical times. One cannot, after all, carve out toes unless he knows where the foot will go. We need tools to do some of the fine work. The tools are our childhood experiences. And I'm convinced that one of those experiences must be children's books. And they must be experienced within the early years of our long childhood. — E.L. Konigsburg