One Apple A Day #508 - create your unique recipe
When I was a kid, my favourite treat for Easter was a typical cake in my region called "Focaccia Veneto", or "Fugazza" in my dialect. But not every Fugazza. Only the one made by my grandmother. The funny thing is that she didn't have a proper recipe to share, or at least this is what she told us. So, no matter how much my mum tried to create the same result studying my grandmother, her cake has always been different. Truth is, I've never tasted anything like my grandmother's Fugazza, but over the year my mum developed her own unique, gorgeous recipe that I love as much.
Behaviour is a function of the Person in their Environment, or B = f (P,E).
Psychologist Kurt Lewin defined the equation above in his book Principles of Topological Psychology, published in 1936.
My understanding of this simple formula is that the same person behaves differently when the environment changes. At the same time, two persons will always show different behaviours even if they share the same situation.
The combination "person plus environment" is always unique, even when behaviours are similar or the same. The problem is that while environments can be observed and behaviours can be measured, a person uniqueness is more elusive. So, what we do most of the time is to study the practices of someone successful in a specific environment and model our own actions on theirs. All of this hoping to get the same results.
Unfortunately, it's not so simple. Indeed, we can learn a lot from a successful person, we can even clone almost perfectly her behaviours.
But we will never be her or him.
We must find our own unique recipe.
One that is rooted in and sourced from our identity.
In the end, we must always remember to start from the ancient wise words inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Know thyself