Читать книгу Becoming an Invitational Leader - William W Purkey - Страница 16

No one is born with a self-concept. The development and structure of self-awareness is a lifelong research project. It is a continuous process of learning. By experiencing the world through countless inviting and disinviting interactions, we gradually develop a theory of personal existence. Thanks to the plethora of interactions our world provides, a self-concept is forged, complete with a complex hierarchy of attributes and categories.

These repeated experiences, positive or negative, have a profound effect on the self. Referencing W. Somerset Maugham once again, this gradual process is expressed beautifully in The Razor’s Edge:

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learned to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tale they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poems they read, and the God they believed in.

Everything that happens to us happens forever. Although it is impossible to change the past, it is possible to change our perceptions of past experiences, control our present activities, and imagine and act on future possibilities.