Perhaps one of the most common and dangerous human delusions regarding a person is the belief that you cannot change yourself, your personality. This belief rests on the conviction that there are qualities, abilities, tastes, habits and weaknesses that are assigned to us, which are the essence of our personality and cannot be changed. Often you hear, “Well, I’m such a person (lazy, without certain abilities, necessary qualities, etc.) I can’t do it differently and there’s nothing to be done.” So many people think that they rush with this conviction all their lives.
So is it possible to change your personality? If yes, then how can you change yourself?
Is it possible to change yourself?
Or indeed, personality is something permanent and unchanging, and all the metamorphoses that can occur in it are cosmetic, so to speak, and do not touch its essence. I am sure that it is possible to change oneself and for the better: get rid of personal shortcomings, get and develop certain qualities, change the character ...
Everyone can, if he wants, be transformed beyond recognition: to overcome the "natural" cowardice and shyness, becoming a strong character and confident, temper the tendency to anxiety and feelings, gaining strong nerves and equanimity. Yesterday's timid and downtrodden young man can become a sociable and self-confident young man, just by making some effort.
And it would be a mistake to believe that this young man is timid and reticent in blood and is “naturally” clamped and not adapted for communication. This mistake, this delusion is not innocuous, from a practical point of view, a character, such as a delusion, concluding that Singapore is the capital of Africa (of course, provided that you do not pass the final examinations in geography at the institute, and if you fail waiting for a lot of unforgettable impressions on the vast expanses of our homeland as part of the army).
This false belief is much more dangerous than a harmless geographical, because, believing that you cannot change yourself, you give up, you are afraid to put effort into working on yourself and you live with your own shortcomings that prevent you from living and poison your life. people.
Why am I so sure that can you change yourself?
First, the human species from nature is equipped with a strong adaptation potential, the ability to change, adapting to the conditions of the surrounding reality. This makes a person flexible and makes it possible to change either under external influence or by controlling the conscious efforts of the will from within, measuring this effort with the inner need for personality change. (in the context of this resource, we are interested in the latter, namely, conscious control over how we will change and whether we will at all. We ourselves want to decide what we will become? Right?)
Secondly, there are plenty of examples of how people have changed either for the worse or for the better. One such example is myself, the author of these lines. I succeeded, through internal resistance, to become more self-confident, disciplined, organized, and sociable.
This was manifested in the improvement of the quality of my life and the realization of significant life achievements. But before, I, too, considered laziness, a tendency to experience and depression, cowardice, shyness, inability to keep and control my feelings with their intrinsically permanent qualities and did not believe in the possibility of their changing.
It seemed to me that I was what I was and that I would remain. The reality showed that I was mistaken: I coped with depression and anxiety and panic attacks without any pills or treatments, my mathematical abilities improved (I used to think that I don’t have them at all) even my musical tastes changed (not only did they change, but very much expanded) and much more, the list goes on for a very long time.
Value of fighting with yourself
So I will insist that the reader of these lines, instead of destroying himself with faith in the immutability of his personality, still take and try to work on himself and change. Even if he fails to become what he wants, his efforts will still be rewarded. Since the struggle and attempts to cope with internal resistance, which will necessarily arise on the way, if you want to change yourself, always pay off!
Acting against resistance, against your weaknesses and rooted habits, you train your will and temper your character. The degree of control over your feelings is increasing and a sober understanding of what is happening inside you and what is leading you is coming!
And with accuracy, vice versa. An individual who is used to seeing himself as an aggregate of unchanged characteristics, habits, deficiencies, and pathologies is always in the wake of his character and weaknesses. It remains as it is.
His will is not tempered in the struggle with feelings; he is controlled by his ego, fears and complexes. Every day he capitulates to them: his will weakens, and the true essence begins to fade over an abundance of deficiencies and habits.
Internal struggle and resistance and their value is the core of my system of self-development and self-improvement. The value of these things is not only instrumental (that is, not necessarily only a means to achieve a specific goal: the struggle against complexes for the sake of defeating them), but they also carry great value in themselves. About this I will write more than once in more detail.
Can personality change?
You must understand that your true identity is not a set of habits, the fruits of education and childhood traumas. Everything is just tinsel and habits of the mind and feelings !. It is gainable, i.e. appeared as you become and also disappears when you just want to: after all, all this is not written in your genes. Personality is a dynamic concept, constantly changing, and not something predetermined forever!
Well, of course, there are some natural limitations, innate tendencies, and so on. What you will not affect in any way, and I understand it perfectly. At the same time, I see a universal need to exaggerate the number of those personality factors that are supposedly impossible to influence.
What is simply a flaw, manifested as a result of laziness and unwillingness to do something, is mistakenly perceived by many as a natural and once and for all definite personality trait! Perhaps this is just a psychological ploy designed to write off responsibility for one’s character from a person.
This is the same blatant fallacy as "innate illiteracy"! (well, think how it can be innate? we are all born without knowing the language, our first words are the simplest syllables "MAMA" "DAD") In fact, many of the properties of our being, which we fundamentally cannot influence due to natural, The natural limitations are much less than what we all used to believe.
And you are convinced of this when, as a result of your self-development, you will experience many positive personal metamorphoses that will affect those of your qualities that you have previously thought rooted in you forever.
My experience of personal metamorphosis
I myself managed to overcome many internal negative traits that had disturbed me since childhood, and so would continue to disturb and spoil my life (and I was a very weak and sickly child, and then the young men had many shortcomings (and now I have but much less)). It is a pity that I did not pay attention to them even then and did not begin to work on myself, with the assurance that I was able to cope with this.
And the practice only confirmed my confidence, giving me a valuable result both in terms of developing my internal potential and in the context of improving the factors of external comfort and order (relationships with people, financial situation, life achievements, etc.), as a reflection of personality changes.
Usually, those who say “I am such a person and stay like that” have never tried to do something with themselves and change for the better. Then how do they know that nothing can be done?
How to change yourself? This is a big question and almost all materials on this site will be devoted to this. After all, self-development and self-improvement imply changes of oneself and this is always the case. Therefore, this article is simply an attempt to destroy the well-established fallacy and to call for action, and it can be to instill in someone the hope that you can change yourself. And specific recommendations you can find now and then as you publish on the pages of this site - the topic is very extensive.
Change for the better is unnatural?
Once I ran into such an objection. “They say yes, you can change yourself, but why do it? Is this not unnatural? You are what you are, why be violent over a person? ”
I asked counter questions: “Well, what do you think shaped your personality, what factors influenced its formation? What are you doing now? It must be due to upbringing, parents, social circle and some innate parameters (heredity, natural predispositions, etc.).
Basically, all these factors relate to random, to those that you could not influence. After all, parents do not choose and social circle is also not always. Not to mention heredity and genes. So it turns out that the development of you as a person under the influence of external, arbitrary factors that are not very dependent on your will you consider natural.
And attempts to consciously influence your character and habits, relying on the understanding of who you want to become and the formation of what qualities do you meet your goals - does this mean unnatural? To be led by external circumstances, writing off everything at the mercy of the occasion ...
What is so correct and natural about it? And why is conscious work on oneself, change for the better in order to achieve happiness and harmony, is it perceived as violence against oneself? ”
On the contrary, determining independently the vector of development of yourself, you bring that order into your life, which you yourself desire and do not give external circumstances to completely decide what you will be. It brings you closer to the realization of your life plan, to satisfaction with yourself, with your life and with your environment, which you choose, and not satisfied with what external circumstances have imposed on you.
As for the question "why change yourself?". I answer it, perhaps, in the majority of my articles in an explicit and implicit form. I will answer again. Self-development is a dynamic process of continuous improvement of all the best human qualities.
The best and worst qualities of a person
By the best qualities, I understand such properties of nature, which correspond to considerations of personal comfort and happiness, harmonious relationships with people, success in life, overcoming difficulties, inner peace, mind order, health, willpower and spiritual freedom.
Bad qualities are those that make us suffer, get angry, burst into inner contradictions, complicate our lives and poison the lives of those around us, make us painful, dependent on passions and desires, morally and physically weak.
Developing good qualities and getting rid of bad qualities, you strive for happiness and freedom, doing the opposite, you fly into the abyss of suffering and dependence. Self-development implies the first. When you contribute to the development of the best properties of your nature, you change, as you manifest new abilities and old flaws disappear. This is the meaning of self-development in these positive personality metamorphoses.
That is, in fact, everything, no wise philosophy or relative morality, everything depends on your personal happiness and harmony, and not on some abstract ideas. This is what I want you to aspire to and this is what this site is all about.
I have already said what a terrible mistake is the confidence in the impossibility of changing yourself. But where a dangerous thing is the absence of the need to change something in yourself. Many believe that they are already the crowns of creation, the most worthy representatives of the human species, and they saw all sorts of self-development sites in the coffin.
It really happens that a person is really very developed, but more often he falls into the trap of his pride and pride, believing that he has nowhere to develop, because there is almost always an opportunity to move somewhere and improve something.
And besides, very often, education and upbringing are not able to develop personal potential completely (and they can even do some harm), leaving behind many gaping gaps, undisclosed abilities, hidden anxieties and complexes within the structure of individuality.
Therefore, in almost all cases, it is necessary to make efforts to make something out of yourself: after all, few people are so lucky that its educators and parents were able to give the jump necessary for harmonious development and solving all the internal problems and contradictions that arise.
If you are wondering can i change myselfit means that you recognize the presence in yourself of such properties that need to be changed and do not consider yourself an ideal and a dead end of development and everything is not so bad, you are taking the first steps to self-development, standing on the threshold of wonderful metamorphosis.
It remains only to arm myself with the support that I will provide you with my advice and recommendations for self-improvement, with a song to move in this difficult, but bright path.
Update 01/22/2014: I highly recommend reading the excellent book by Carol Duke - Flexible Consciousness on the topic of this article.
