What’s a personal experience?

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Personal experience is the perception of events filtered through the thoughts, senses and philosophy of a particular human being through direct contact. Psychology and postmodernism have different explanations for the relevance of stimuli in shaping it. The sum of actual experience and the mindset someone is in when producing opinions and interpretations and they influence the advice given to someone in a similar situation.

Psychologists are divided on whether the perception comes from the stimulus itself or from inferences made from the knowledge the person already has. Postmodernist beliefs seem to support the latter, stating that everyone shapes their own reality. Thus, each person’s thoughts and perceptions are the truth to him or her, and personal experience cannot be made universal. Still others believe that certain aspects of a stimulus will be interpreted by the subject’s history and cultural background, marrying the stimulus with external factors that influence internal philosophy.

In the case of the person’s personal experience, new situations will be filtered through the already formed attitudes. A familiar scenario could be a romantic disappointment. Someone who has been through a particularly bad breakup may have gotten the impression that everyone interested in him or her is untrustworthy. The person might also attribute to the current lover traits or programs that they actually applied in the previous encounter. This tendency can create problems not only in romance, but in work or other circumstances.

Individuals will often have very different personal experience with the same thing, such as performing a figure skating program. An Olympic-level skater will have sensory awareness of the intense pressure of competition at that level, a larger ice surface, and the extensive training that brought the skater up to that point. A skater who has performed recreationally in a local setting might understand the technical aspects of jumps and spins, and even stage fright itself, but in a different context. The stakes are not that high.

Someone giving advice based on personal experience might try to find the similarities and tailor the advice to those, but always from their own perception. The Olympic skater could help beginners prepare for an upcoming competition by offering technical help from a more decisive point of view, perhaps even from an official coach. Conversely, a recreational skater might push beginners to practice but also to have fun. The difference between building a career and running a business for fun can lead to conflicted driving. Sharing personal experience, however, will help others learn about things they may not have considered, both negative and positive.

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