ABSTRACT
The 31 men and women, my research colleagues, whose experiences provided the raw material for my research were a diverse bunch, with a wide age range, very varied backgrounds in terms of education, work and life experience, professional discipline, developed and under-developed economies and so on. They shared one characteristic, however, namely an interest in the ways in which people use their experiences to develop themselves, to increase their abilities in some way, or to gain more information about the world in which they were engaged.
