My parents also influenced my moral beliefs and, in turn, my personality and behavior. From a very young age, I was told to be considerate of others and to never forget my manners. And though they wanted me to be kind and open-minded, they also wanted me to be firm and confident. Aside from the lessons and morals they were determined to instill in me, I was also influenced by their own personalities. For example, my mother and I both tend to be overly sensitive and worrisome, and my father and I have similar senses of humor. I picked up on much of what they conditioned me to know and the examples that they set for me, but I also was able to develop my own personality separate from theirs and found a way to apply what they taught me in my own decision-making. Now that I am more independent, rather than making the decisions that I think my parents would want me to make, I’ve begun to develop my own sense of direction and my own definition of honor and shame, and make choices on my own.