To someone's sleeping beau:
I'm definitely of an inside-looking-out viewpoint; the only things that I know affect--and therefore in some way change--the mind are stimuli and the mind's reactions thereto. Given that each new experience and thought changes the mind ever so slightly, I see the change of personality as a continuous mental inevitability. Since the brain has changed with each moment, so has the person; each is unique and can't truly be called the same person, I feel--though I do so for convenience anyway.
To clarify, any lines I draw between any "stages" in my mental state are heinously arbitrary and simplistic. However, the buildup of changes does seem to lend itself to division, if only so I can handle my thoughts and reasoning more easily.
I'm not as curious as I'd like to be, given how important sources are in academia and how factually right I want to be for my own good and for that of others--false knowledge is a common killer. However, when I learn something new, I fact-check it. If it's right, I add it to my knowledge. If not, I catalogue why for later. I love to learn, and stay actively open-minded to all sources.
All that great thought, however, comes largely when I'm interested in or see use in the information presented. It's when someone brings me something uninteresting that I start to slip on this policy. I'll write someone's hobby in my notebook, but if it doesn't stick in my mind, I might never dig it up from the pages to search. I look into intrigue and enthusiasm in the interest and in the person, and if neither is in either, I usually let the subject go. It's not an uncommon disposition, but very self-gratifying and less than I want of myself.
Information on the psyche interests me a lot, and I'd gladly read good or promising work. Most of my reasoning, however, comes from my own thoughts. I've read perhaps four or five works dedicated to the subject, only one a textbook. Counting success books, though, which are focused on mindset and were most of my homework for about ten years, I would call myself well-acquainted with a layman's description of the psyche--and that likely shows in my word choice and approach to the subject. I'd welcome more formal sources, though my approach to finding them has been embarrassingly passive.
A thought of just now: I suppose epiphanies are really just collections of synaptic changes big enough to let you think a new way. Maybe epiphany is the wrong word. Maybe there isn't a word for it. I wonder....
As to your thoughts on reading and writing, I agree: they enhance your ability to think and understand in many ways, some of which I find hard to explain and have been surprised to use. I find myself using expressions and knowledge from all sorts of texts, always to my personal benefit. I'd never call any level of expertise a plateau in ability; there's always another thing to learn and apply. I feel that in word-world, limits are where you put them. That's part of the fun I have in visiting it.
