The effect Setting is Unsettling

In a competition of your base personality... nature or nurture?

I say nurture wins.

In a competition of your current behavior… nature or nurture?

I say [current] nature wins.

When I say “[current] nature” I am referring to the environment you have been in the most recently.

For many of you, this is college. For some of you, it is High School. For a few of you, it is work.

Good-natured — kind, friendly, and patient.

“everyone was very good-natured about my comments”

As you can see by those adjectives, the idea of being good-natured is flexible.

Kindness, friendliness, and patience fluctuate.

If you are in a hostile work/school environment, it is easy to be rude towards people, ignore people, and be impatient towards others.

You may still be a good & well-intentioned person at heart, but just because you are not trying to be rude does not automatically mean you are being polite.

The strength of the influence of your setting is overtaking your set [nurture-induced] traits.

Nurture always wins in the end.

The unfortunate reality is that sometimes current nature influences people to do things or change in ways that are hard to bounce back from.

Clarifying examples:

• When you have been a part of a sports team whose teammates and coaches were all on edge and hostile to each other, that can impact how you act as a person in all aspects. (Imagine losing sports teams who classmates constantly ridicule)
• When you have worked a job where the boss is always scolding and making everyone feel less than others, that effect can carry out outside of the workplace. (Imagine overworked investment bankers or underpaid servers)
• When you have been a part of an amazing work team, where everyone is laughing and productive, that feeling can carry out outside the workplace. (Imagine a young tech startup)
• When you have been a part of a successful sports team, where everyone does their job, does it well, does it cohesively, and jokes around, that feeling carries outside of practice. (Imagine the football kids who seem super happy and cool 24/7)

I know I paint this in a negative light, but that is just for dramatic effect.