Hmm, but I don't want to change it. It's me, for better or worse. And since these are often two things on a sliding scale (like agreeableness/assertiveness), there is no right or wrong. Maybe I should be more assertive some times, but that also comes with some drawbacks. I'm fine with where I am.
Or maybe that's just my personality speaking, being stoic and content.
I assume that what really happened is that the author was more capable of answering the questions they way hen wanted to.
A year from now, it'd be interesting to see how hen is doing.
(I'm not asserting that personality is fixed; rather, I'm asserting that 6 weeks is too short a measurement period, and that most of us are not very good at self-assessment)
> Although most people profess to want to change at least one aspect of their personality, those who will put the effort in are surely far fewer
Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous don't actually do the 12 steps as designed by Bill Wilson. They don't understand that it's a piece of spiritual technology designed to produce a spiritual awakening and a reorganization of personality. I've met many people who have become better people through the 12 steps.
I've rewritten them here to give a basic outline and remove any mention of a theistic god. I am not a professional so please forgive me if I've over-simplified or got something wrong. This is how it worked for me at a basic level.
1 - Take a look and see if you have a problem. Admit you have a problem if you have one. You can't fix a problem you refuse to recognize.
2 - Recognize you've tried to solve it by yourself and have failed. You need help from others.
3 - Humble yourself enough to ask for help and be ready to follow direction
4 - List all the complaints people have about you and analyze what you might be doing wrong
5 - Share your failings, no matter how embarrassing, with a trusted other on the principle that confession is good for the soul and sunlight is the best disinfectant
6 - Ask yourself if you're really willing to change. That's not a given. Maybe you aren't.
7 - If you are then do what it takes to change. This is going to be different for everyone.
8 - Look at step 4 and see who you need to apologize to
9 - When you feel you are ready and sufficiently reformed, apologize and make restitution to those on the list you made in step 8. To those that aren't willing to talk, let it go and don't bother them.
10 - Make it a practice to do steps 4 through 9 as needed. We believe in progress not perfection.
11 - We need to remind ourselves daily that we have a problem that we can't solve alone and that we may need the help of others on any given day. I've heard it called a disease of forgetfulness. We may need to wake up in the morning to read and pray if so inclined. As one person told me, "carve out a little piece of each day for the 12 steps"
12 - Carry this message to others who are still suffering
I don't think that's very interesting. Personality disorders or mental health, those matter much more and are real problems for a lot of people.
Personality matters only because it allows health professionals to differentiate what is a problem from what is not.
It's not so hard to change behavior when mental health is not an obstacle or is not involved. Changing personality sounds like a nice luxury for people who don't have mental health problems or personality disorders
And even then, I don't really see the point of changing personality, since a personality is not a real problem, only personality disorders (the medical term) really are problems.
And then there are thought patterns that can be shaped by mental illness that stay even after symptoms go away, those might be changed with CBT.
A couple of anecdata for those interested in this.
The first is the gospel of Mark, which unlike the other synoptic gospels starts with Jesus, probably around the age of 30, coming across John the Baptist and being baptized. Subsequently, Jesus went off into the desert where he prayed for 40 days.
Second is the alchemical process of creating the philosophers stone. Jung argued that this was a description of a process akin to individuation. He believed that what was on the surface metallurgical work (transmuting lead to gold) was actually an obscure formula for remaking the psyche, from whatever was pre-programmed by society into what the individual actually wanted. This process was said to take 40 days.
I think a big trap is mistaking who we are from who we appear to be. Some people try to "seem" a particular way, thinking that they can only change their appearance, like changing one's clothes. The alchemical view that Jung put forward was a bit more radical, suggesting that we can fundamentally change ourselves.
Many people in our modern society experiment on themselves to change their physical bodies and to change their minds. I believe it is interesting to consider similar experimentation on how we change our spirit/emotions.
I heard a story that John Conway decided on the train on the way to university that he was going to turn over a new leaf and be outgoing and talkative, and then was.
I am not convinced that you can change your personality just like that. In fact, I find it striking how little people change their core traits. However, people can learn to live with them, and I think it is the idea here.
You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills.
You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning.
You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate.
You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc...
You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints.
Also understand that the "big 5" are not stats to maximize, while some traits are linked to success, they all have downsides. Extroverts and people high in agreeableness tend to follow the group even when it is wrong, lacking personal judgment. People low in neuroticism can get themselves into trouble because they didn't consider the negative consequences of their choices. Conscientious people can be rigid and obsessive, and there is such a thing as being too open (are you open to murder?).
The idea is: don't change your personality, you will probably fail anyways, but make the best of what you have, by making small adjustments. Ultimately, I think it is what the article suggests, once you take away the "big 5 scoring" bit.
After multiple recommendations, recently I finally read “The Courage to be Disliked” which is a fictional representation of Alfred Adler’s view of psychology / human behavior.
Shifting from a Freudian paradigm to an Adlerian one has been massive. I’d rather be an accountable self-determining adult than an adult who attributes my flaws to traumas long gone.
If you’re serious about self-directed change, Adler is a good place to start.
A bit worrying that she measured change by using an "online personality test to assess where I currently scored on the Big Five".
I do believe that we can change our internal responses by slowly teaching ourselves to respond differently.
However I also believe that thinking about thinking is a dangerous activity. The risks are training yourself to be neurotic, and a habit of overthinking.
We can use our rational minds to change our irrational responses.
However how many people are skilled at teaching themselves? We could look at how good they are at teaching others (especially emotional kids).
Having worked as a therapist for years, treating thousands of client, and read more books and studies on this than I can count, I can for certain say that is MUCH MUCH simpler to change the environment than your personality to improve well beeing and general functioning.
To tired to pick a apart this article now. But this is feel good nonsense... Just one example, mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome.
Also, 6 weeks is nothing. When I worked at inpatient unit we sometimes needed 6 weeks before patient reverted to baseline personality after admittance. This is just as silly as saying that you changed your lifestyle permanently with regard exercises after just a few weeks into your new year's resolution. You MIGHT have, but lets wait untill next year and see if the permanent claim is true.
The article conflates symptom management (state) with structural personality change (trait) and mistakes behavioral masking for genuine psychological shift.
Personality traits are defined by their stability and enduring nature, independent of active intervention. If a change requires constant, conscious maintenance (the "medicine"), it is by definition a coping strategy, not a personality trait. This indicates the underlying neurotic structure is still present, just temporarily suppressed. You don’t cure type one diabetes by taking insulin; you manage it.
Any new intervention (yoga, journaling) creates a temporary lift in mood and self-efficacy (the Placebo effect or Novelty effect). Measuring immediately at the peak of this novelty does not account for the very common regression to the mean that inevitably follows.
And here is a basic demonstration of why you do RCT with proper non-subjective measures for outcome. She writes: "I had wanted to change for the sake of this article... Answering questions like this helped push me up the percentiles." She asserts that answering the questions differently proved she changed, rather than proving she simply learned how to answer the test to get the desired result.
Introverts can behave like extroverts, but it costs them metabolic and psychic energy. Extroverts gain energy from it. She conflates social skills (which can be learned) with extroversion (a biological orientation toward reward sensitivity).
And even if I practice mindfulness for years myself, I’m extremely skeptical about over the top claims surrounding it. But a highly neurotic patient can learn mindfulness to manage panic attacks. They are still high in trait Neuroticism (highly sensitive to threat), but they have better "software" to handle the hardware. The article claims the hardware itself has been swapped out, which is an annoying oversimplification for readers.
So in summary, this article goes against everything I have seen in my practice, it doesn’t understand the concepts in question, and it’s not even internally logically coherent. So basically just as bad as every other mainstream article I ever read on psychology.
"The incontinent babblerer at the steering wheel of my mind seemed to fear being asked to step out of the vehicle for a while" - man that typo really reminds me to use the restroom before long rides...
I took the linked test and I was a little disappointed that I scored badly on all creativity measures. But the scale seems a little silly: you score higher for doing a broader range than doing one thing deeply. So I scored badly on visual arts, even though I paint original pieces, because I'm not interested in movies or photography.
What worked for me. Remind yourself every day, with convincing reasons, why you want to change, your brain will gradually rewire itself. don't know if this is technically proven.
I quit smoking (Was a chain smoker until 2013) and drinking this way. I also changed from being short-tempered (Had hyper tension) to rarely getting angry nowadays by using the same method.
21 comments
[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 48.2 ms ] threadMy bet is loads of people would have shot way up on the neuroticism scale.
Or maybe that's just my personality speaking, being stoic and content.
A year from now, it'd be interesting to see how hen is doing.
(I'm not asserting that personality is fixed; rather, I'm asserting that 6 weeks is too short a measurement period, and that most of us are not very good at self-assessment)
Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous don't actually do the 12 steps as designed by Bill Wilson. They don't understand that it's a piece of spiritual technology designed to produce a spiritual awakening and a reorganization of personality. I've met many people who have become better people through the 12 steps.
I've rewritten them here to give a basic outline and remove any mention of a theistic god. I am not a professional so please forgive me if I've over-simplified or got something wrong. This is how it worked for me at a basic level.
1 - Take a look and see if you have a problem. Admit you have a problem if you have one. You can't fix a problem you refuse to recognize.
2 - Recognize you've tried to solve it by yourself and have failed. You need help from others.
3 - Humble yourself enough to ask for help and be ready to follow direction
4 - List all the complaints people have about you and analyze what you might be doing wrong
5 - Share your failings, no matter how embarrassing, with a trusted other on the principle that confession is good for the soul and sunlight is the best disinfectant
6 - Ask yourself if you're really willing to change. That's not a given. Maybe you aren't.
7 - If you are then do what it takes to change. This is going to be different for everyone.
8 - Look at step 4 and see who you need to apologize to
9 - When you feel you are ready and sufficiently reformed, apologize and make restitution to those on the list you made in step 8. To those that aren't willing to talk, let it go and don't bother them.
10 - Make it a practice to do steps 4 through 9 as needed. We believe in progress not perfection.
11 - We need to remind ourselves daily that we have a problem that we can't solve alone and that we may need the help of others on any given day. I've heard it called a disease of forgetfulness. We may need to wake up in the morning to read and pray if so inclined. As one person told me, "carve out a little piece of each day for the 12 steps"
12 - Carry this message to others who are still suffering
Personality matters only because it allows health professionals to differentiate what is a problem from what is not.
It's not so hard to change behavior when mental health is not an obstacle or is not involved. Changing personality sounds like a nice luxury for people who don't have mental health problems or personality disorders
And even then, I don't really see the point of changing personality, since a personality is not a real problem, only personality disorders (the medical term) really are problems.
And then there are thought patterns that can be shaped by mental illness that stay even after symptoms go away, those might be changed with CBT.
The first is the gospel of Mark, which unlike the other synoptic gospels starts with Jesus, probably around the age of 30, coming across John the Baptist and being baptized. Subsequently, Jesus went off into the desert where he prayed for 40 days.
Second is the alchemical process of creating the philosophers stone. Jung argued that this was a description of a process akin to individuation. He believed that what was on the surface metallurgical work (transmuting lead to gold) was actually an obscure formula for remaking the psyche, from whatever was pre-programmed by society into what the individual actually wanted. This process was said to take 40 days.
I think a big trap is mistaking who we are from who we appear to be. Some people try to "seem" a particular way, thinking that they can only change their appearance, like changing one's clothes. The alchemical view that Jung put forward was a bit more radical, suggesting that we can fundamentally change ourselves.
Many people in our modern society experiment on themselves to change their physical bodies and to change their minds. I believe it is interesting to consider similar experimentation on how we change our spirit/emotions.
But, open neurotics are the funnest people.
You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills.
You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning.
You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate.
You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc...
You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints.
Also understand that the "big 5" are not stats to maximize, while some traits are linked to success, they all have downsides. Extroverts and people high in agreeableness tend to follow the group even when it is wrong, lacking personal judgment. People low in neuroticism can get themselves into trouble because they didn't consider the negative consequences of their choices. Conscientious people can be rigid and obsessive, and there is such a thing as being too open (are you open to murder?).
The idea is: don't change your personality, you will probably fail anyways, but make the best of what you have, by making small adjustments. Ultimately, I think it is what the article suggests, once you take away the "big 5 scoring" bit.
Shifting from a Freudian paradigm to an Adlerian one has been massive. I’d rather be an accountable self-determining adult than an adult who attributes my flaws to traumas long gone.
If you’re serious about self-directed change, Adler is a good place to start.
I do believe that we can change our internal responses by slowly teaching ourselves to respond differently.
However I also believe that thinking about thinking is a dangerous activity. The risks are training yourself to be neurotic, and a habit of overthinking.
We can use our rational minds to change our irrational responses.
However how many people are skilled at teaching themselves? We could look at how good they are at teaching others (especially emotional kids).
To tired to pick a apart this article now. But this is feel good nonsense... Just one example, mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome.
Also, 6 weeks is nothing. When I worked at inpatient unit we sometimes needed 6 weeks before patient reverted to baseline personality after admittance. This is just as silly as saying that you changed your lifestyle permanently with regard exercises after just a few weeks into your new year's resolution. You MIGHT have, but lets wait untill next year and see if the permanent claim is true.
The article conflates symptom management (state) with structural personality change (trait) and mistakes behavioral masking for genuine psychological shift.
Personality traits are defined by their stability and enduring nature, independent of active intervention. If a change requires constant, conscious maintenance (the "medicine"), it is by definition a coping strategy, not a personality trait. This indicates the underlying neurotic structure is still present, just temporarily suppressed. You don’t cure type one diabetes by taking insulin; you manage it.
Any new intervention (yoga, journaling) creates a temporary lift in mood and self-efficacy (the Placebo effect or Novelty effect). Measuring immediately at the peak of this novelty does not account for the very common regression to the mean that inevitably follows.
And here is a basic demonstration of why you do RCT with proper non-subjective measures for outcome. She writes: "I had wanted to change for the sake of this article... Answering questions like this helped push me up the percentiles." She asserts that answering the questions differently proved she changed, rather than proving she simply learned how to answer the test to get the desired result.
Introverts can behave like extroverts, but it costs them metabolic and psychic energy. Extroverts gain energy from it. She conflates social skills (which can be learned) with extroversion (a biological orientation toward reward sensitivity).
And even if I practice mindfulness for years myself, I’m extremely skeptical about over the top claims surrounding it. But a highly neurotic patient can learn mindfulness to manage panic attacks. They are still high in trait Neuroticism (highly sensitive to threat), but they have better "software" to handle the hardware. The article claims the hardware itself has been swapped out, which is an annoying oversimplification for readers.
So in summary, this article goes against everything I have seen in my practice, it doesn’t understand the concepts in question, and it’s not even internally logically coherent. So basically just as bad as every other mainstream article I ever read on psychology.