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Lv 5
? asked in Arts & HumanitiesPhilosophy · 7 years ago

What is it called when you change yourself by letting others influence you?

Over the past year or so, I wasn't happy with myself or my personality/image AT ALL. What I did in 2013 was NOT be myself. I essentially started off on a blank slate again and let my close friends (who I trust completely) influence me, therefore picking up most of my current traits/behaviors from them.

I almost want to say I've been a puppet for the past year when it comes to what I was trying to do, letting other people change who I was into something better.

All I'm asking is, is there a proper term or word to describe this way of thinking that I had over the past year? Thanks to anyone that helps.

6 Answers

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  • 7 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    Conformity...Normative social influence- conform to be approve by others

  • 5 years ago

    Free will is no illusion. If a person considers what is written in scripture to be the literal truth, even only so far as salvation goes (i.e. that by believing that Christ died on the cross for your sins, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God, justifying you to the Father; you will not stand in the White Throne judgment of the wicked, but rather will stand before the BEMA seat of Christ), then the simple choice that you made, just to believe this truth has changed your very eternal destination! How could that in any way be irrelevant?? Even in setting aside eternity, and considering only this life on earth, although often we don’t get to choose the situations life presents to us, our actions surely can change the course of our lives. There is not even an argument there. Suppose, for a simple example, that chance or whatever you want to call it...... a situation, as it were, befell you, and you found yourself suddenly jobless, with no money in the bank, and hungry. Days pass.... a week, then two. Your pride will not allow you to depend on the "milk of human kindness", and accept from others what you have thus far been able to provide for yourself. Then, you see a chance to change all of that by victimizing an easy target. What do you do? Give up your pride, and seek food and temporary shelter from say, the Mission, or Salvation Army, and hope that an opportunity presents itself to allow you to stay honest; or do you commit the act that victimizes someone else, perhaps destroying their very survival, to fill your own needs? Who else might that decision affect? Some sick, elderly person that depends on your victim? A small child? No, I can not agree with you on this point. Sort of reversing your own example, and placing you as the robber, yes? My point here is that there is always the right thing to do, and the wrong thing to do. The robber in your example had that same choice to make...... to do right, or to do what he was doing. How did his decision affect others? How did it affect him? Does he take the life of the lady that can't afford to just hand over her purse? Right and wrong. Making the right choices or making the wrong choices..... I tend to believe that THAT is what free will is all about. No way it could be irrelevant.

  • Anonymous
    7 years ago

    It sounds to me like you're looking for some constructive criticism so here...

    Sure the analytically correct word for it is conformation but the new "cool" ,if you will, term is called being a sellout being a sellout is also called being a fake, it's like being a girl who cut the cheerleaders squad but dyed her beautiful auburn her blonde s she could fit in just so she can cut more girls from the squad just like she once was, you're that girl, you are a fake, a sellout.

    today the opposite of being a fake is being yourself being who you're are or affectionately keeping it 1hunnin' (100) aka 100% yourself in otherwords you don't give a **** that you're shirt was cool last week you like right now so you couldn't give a **** about what they think no matter who they are.

    so may advice is find a new style that suits you don't go back to your old one because you weren't comfortable in it which is why you were forced out of it so easily go do you, or keep being fake in which case i'd expose you as fake *** ****** on facebook but hey popularity ain't cheap why do you think so many people sellout

  • 7 years ago

    I'm not sure there is a specific term for what you described. It sounds as if you allowed yourself to be transformed into an exceptional person by the trustworthy people around you. I would say that makes you strong, intelligent, and insightful. Congratulations! Some people live a lifetime and never accomplish what you did in just one year!

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  • Anonymous
    7 years ago

    It has many possible names. As a process undergone more recently, it's a form of rebirth. This is exactly what a child does, only they don't get to choose the people that create them.

    Faith, conformity, co-dependance, succumbing to peer pressure by choice.

    Source(s): I've lived my whole life this way.
  • Fuego
    Lv 4
    7 years ago

    Impossibility, you can't 'change' who you are, none of us can, that's why there's no 'free will'. You being influenced by 'other' people regardless of whether they know it or not? I call it destiny.

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