nature nurture and personal control

This week I started one of my summer classes online, Psychology of Life Span Development. While reading the first chapter focused on the nature vs nurture debate and the underpinnings of how we define and measure “positive” life development, I began to think hard about what makes a great life. What is it that allows for, causes, or enhances this “positive development?” When I think about my personal development, I want to grow to be an extraordinary person engaged with the world around me. Over the past year, I have thought a lot about leadership and achieving an extraordinary life. As I make pretty big decisions for my life and am starting to see at least what direction I am headed I have been quiet concerned about this debate. In my life I want love, happiness, fulfillment, and success, in that order. These seem to be the ingredients for a great life, but where do they come from? In my opinion it is more than nature vs nurture, but also personal choice and desire.

Traditional discussions of personal development focus on nature, being genetics and predisposition; and nurture, being a person’s environment and how life events impact them. While many people like to argue for one being stronger than the other, most advanced discussions come to realize that it is really a combination of the two working in tandem. I like to think of it like a sculpture. The final piece of art is a creation of both the material and work of the artist. The piece is bound to the limitations of the material and the acts of the artist on it. Like the material of a sculpture, a person can only develop within the limitations of their genetics and biological existence. Each life experience is like an act of an artist molding and forming the individual creating a unique finished product. This is all fine, but I don’t believe humans are like a chunk of clay, marble, wood or otherwise. Humans have the ability to not only respond, but to create. I believe a truly great person capitalizes on this ability.

Your own life is the one thing you can truly own. Being proactive in development, growth and success makes a truly amazing life. As I have talked with a lot of successful people I highly respect, looking for advice and guidance as I prepare to enter the “real world,” no one has ever told me that good things just fell into their lap. I started to see a theme in the constant advice I received that all the best things in life don’t come easy. I started to realize that all of these awesome individuals grabbed their life by the horns and showed it where to go. This seemed to be the case across the board. Great successes, happiness, meaning, achievement, and love are all investments. You can only get out what you put in. I have never talked to an accomplished professional who told me they inherited the company from their parents and have had smooth sailing ever since. I have never met anyone great saying they were born satisfied and accomplished. I have never talked with a happily married older couple who told me that they have had nothing but rainbows and butterflies and never had to work to make their relationship fulfilling. All positive outcomes have come because they cared enough to put in the effort.

This theory seems to have nothing to do with nature or nurture, or does it? Are some people just inclined to take the actions necessary to live great lives? Do some people have experiences that motivate them to go and find what they are looking for? This is my question. While looking for love, happiness, and success, who is in control? Will the girl of my dreams walk up and say hello and live happily ever after? Will I sit on a park bench look out over the lake and have happiness hit me in the face? Will I walk into a random office building to use a bathroom and find a job that will launch me into a successful career? While I think that fate, nature, and nurture, are have some place in that, I really think that truly great results will come from blood, sweat, and tears.

But maybe there is a place for traditional developmentalists. Maybe the ability and desire to work for success is out of our control. Maybe success comes from holding the ingredients and experiences necessary to achieve it. Maybe love and happiness is something that people either have or don’t. This could be the case, but that isn’t a world I want to live in. I want to live in a place where I am responsible for my outcomes. While I understand I work within a framework out of my control, I truly believe that I have what it takes to grasp for that extraordinary life.