For me several things stand out.
I was very fortunate, though I didn't think so at the time, to have limited contact with other kids my age growing up. This wasn't a planned thing, just a matter of the neighborhood we lived in. The result of this was that I realized something that I don't think a lot of my peers did. That is, the older people weren't stupid -- stupidity was a luxury most of them couldn't have afforded in the 1930's and 40's, and youth, being perforce inexperienced, was more likely to be in error.
That led to the conclusion that Conservatism, being based on ideas that had been tried over many generations would usually present more functional solutions than Liberalism, with its embrace of "new," or more often, new-seeming ideas.
I also take pains to consider the opposite poles as it were, of Human Nature. So when a political or social approach is suggested to me, I carefully consider not only how it might operate for the ennobled members of Society, but what opportunities it presents for the debased.
Experience has taught me that nobility in each individual fails at one time or another, but debasement is tireless.
Another thing that has shaped my views is a revulsion with moral stands that cost the one who espouses them little or nothing, but create detrimental results that will fall on others.
An example of this is the oh-so-grand position taken by certain people that persons known to be withholding information about planned terrorist attacks should not be forcefully interrogated. Such people hold a position that they think virtuous, in the near certainty that if someone dies in the planned attack, it won't be themselves.
There is more of course, much more really. But I think I've given the flavor of the process that led to my political beliefs.
