PERSONALITY TRANSFORMATIONS: MYTHS ON ALTERING PERSONALITY TYPES

We tend to think that we are who we are and there is not much we can do about that. But the fact is, we choose our personality and who we are. Our personality is shaped by the choices we make over time. One of the most frequent questions in personal development probably is “Can I change my personality type?” According to most personality type theories, the person’s type is inborn and does not change. However, people can develop traits and habits that differ or even directly contradict the description of their type.

An example may help us understand better. Suppose lights in the room suddenly go off and we are in complete darkness. We may be able to navigate our way to the door, but which of our senses will come into play? Touch? Hearing? Smell? It would be anything but vision, our preferred sense. As soon as the lights come back on, we will switch back to using vision again as it makes it much easier to navigate around the room.

The way our personality works is quite identical. The environment we are in shapes our personality in a certain way, forcing us to develop traits and habits that might be foreign to our type. For instance, if we are naturally casual and spontaneous, but our work schedule is very structured and our manager is obsessive about schedules, our preferences are likely to change. However, we will probably switch back as soon as we leave that job. The same rule applies to other traits as well.

Here it is important to consider that sociability is often confused with extraversion, just like shyness is confused with introversion – this is a common oversight when it comes to deliberating personality types. While extraverted people naturally find it easier to talk to other people (they gain energy when they do this), there are many shy or solitary people among them. Conversely, introverted types lose energy when they communicate with others, but you would be able to find many eloquent individuals in that group.

Does personality stay the same from birth for the rest of your life, or can it be changed? For decades personality was considered as unmalleable as concrete – who we were at age 15 is who we would be at age 75. But within the last 20 or so years, as cognitive and behavioural sciences have evolved, we have come to see personality as at least marginally changeable, and possibly much more so. While certain personality elements remain stable over time, others change in distinct ways.  In other words, personality is both relatively stable and changeable, and the degree of change is specific to each person. As to what influences personality stability or malleability, both genetics and environmental factors play lead roles.

The relatively new wrinkle in this understanding is epigenetic influence, in which genes for certain factors may be “switched on” by environmental influences. What this means is that when it comes to personality change, we should not compare ourselves to others.  Our especially likable and gregarious friend in middle school is still probably going to be more likable and gregarious than most people we know in mid-life. What matters is how much we have changed – and that is very much a person-specific evaluation.

Personality tests can be part of the problem. They are like a frame in a movie—just a part of the story of our life. They tell us where we are and, in that way, they are very valuable. Personality tests are self-reported. Our view of ourselves is constantly changing based on our current focus, context, and emotions. 

Another aspect to consider is that anyone who has ever done something great with their life has had to transform themselves from who they are to who they became. They had to act accordingly beyond their current personality and circumstances to eventually do what they did and become who they became.

In this aspect, some fallacies (untruths) that limit our growth and potential are:

Fallacy #1: Personality Can Be Categorized into “Types”.

This states that the way we react to life is just “who we are,” and we should accept it, and not try to change it, and we could not if we tried. Even if those traits are limitations, there is nothing we can do about it.

There are no personality types that lock us into a way of being. These labels we take on tend to excuse us from taking personal responsibility for the behavioral outcomes we experience. We can shape our personalities to serve our goals. Our personality should come from our goals. Our goals should not come from our personality.

Fallacy #2: Personality Is Innate and Fixed

Our personalities change over time. Who do we want to be in the future is more important than who you are now, and should actually inform who we are now. Our intended future self can direct our current identity and personality far more than our former self can. We can use our future self as the filter for developing our personality in the present. Our future self can be evolved and different from our current self. Successful people start with a vision of their future self and use it as the filter for everything they do.

Fallacy #3: Personality Comes from Our Past

The idea that we are defined by our past or that the past is the best predictor of our future is true, but not because we cannot change. We simply have not for another reason.

Four reasons that keep people stuck in their past may be:

Past events can inform and change our present and future because we are learning from them. If not, we short-change our future. How we describe, interpret, and identify with our past has far more to do with where we are, here and now, than it has to do with our actual past.

Fallacy #4: Personality Must Be Discovered

Our personality, like our passion, is created by us and not discovered. It is designed. It is a by-product of the decisions we make. What we fail to understand sometimes is that inspiration follows action, not the other way around. Unless and until we take action, our confidence and imagination will remain low. We need to decide what we want and begin moving forward. With progress—even minuscule progress—our clarity and confidence will increase, opening the door for greater flexibility and change.

Fallacy #5: Personality Is Our True and “Authentic” Self

Our “authentic self” is a moving target, especially if we are of the kind to explore possibilities and are growing. To define ourselves with a fixed, authentic self is self-limiting and rigid. It lacks imagination and a growth mindset. Our authentic self is what we most believe in and who we aspire to be. Moreover, our authentic self is going to change. Being authentic is about being honest, and being honest is about facing the truth, not justifying our limitations.

The Gap and the Gain

When we are in the gap, we cannot enjoy or comprehend the benefits in our life. All we are focused on is why something was not how we thought it should have been. For instance, we might live in a great house. But if we are in the gap, then all we might see is what is wrong with our house. We may have an amazing partner but only see what we believe to be wrong or missing in them.

As we get older, we tend not to put ourselves into new contexts, so our personality becomes predictable. We get into our comfort zones. We see consistency in everyday life because of the power of the situation. Putting ourselves in new environments, around new people, and taking on new roles is one of the quickest ways to change our personality, for better or worse.

To conclude, our basic personality type cannot change – however, we can change the aspects of your personality that we are unhappy with. By doing this we will strengthen our shadow traits and become a more well-rounded individual, even though our dominant traits will still remain the same. Such a change could be triggered by either the environment we are in or our own will – to each his own.

**Source Credits: Parts adapted from The Book:- Personality Isn’t Permanent By Benjamin Hardy

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

EXPLORING HUMAN BEHAVIOR THROUGH SCUBA DIVING: LESSONS AND INSIGHTS – (CHAPTER 01)

Scuba Diving is one of those activities that changes us in many ways. Not just through the training, but also by what we see and experience underwater, has this lasting effect on how we experience the world above. A lot of sports and hobbies can reinforce our character and teach us valuable life lessons. Here are some ways in which we think, Scuba Diving has changed our lives. It might be a stretch, but some of those lessons apply to management and business as well.

01) -> Equalize Your Airspaces

During descent, the pressure changes, increasing with the weight of the water, pushing on places in our body with airspaces that are unaccustomed to it. The first things to complain are the ears. We can fix this discomfort, equalizing the pressure to match the change around by pinching our nose and lightly blowing. This adds air into the cavities and canals running through our head and the discomfort dissipates. Every dive is different. Sometimes the ears complain and sometimes the build-up is in the head: behind the eyes, stemming from the nose, centred in the forehead, wherever our congestion may be. Everyone descends at a different rate depending on how their body responds. Sometimes we feel stuck above everyone else, watching them continue to their depths, while we are left behind. Other times we watch others from below, kicking up slightly, wiggling their jaws, trying any and everything to get their sinuses to cooperate.

Lesson:……………. Equalization can be correlated to life; everyone is moving at different rates, allowing themselves to become accustomed to their surroundings at different times.

We need to be patient with our self and to not worry about the other people around us. Diving with pressure-induced pain is not fun, just as forcing yourself into certain situations can be uncomfortable. If we give ourselves time to adjust, time to equalize and overcome the surrounding pressure, we will get to the destination all the same. It does not matter how quickly or slowly we descend along our paths of life, as long as we keep trying and keep practicing different techniques until we find the one that works for us individually.

Trying to muscle through the pressure and stresses of our lives can end up hurting us. And with that comes the simple notion of listening to our body, heart, and mind. Sometimes it is okay to take a step back, kick ourselves up a bit where the pressure is not so strong, and give yourself some extra time. Sometimes it is okay to say, “it’s not happening today, I’m going to sit this one out and try again tomorrow”.

02) -> Breathe Continuously And Never Hold Your Breath

While underwater, it is essential to maintain a constant breathing rate, inhaling and exhaling, that raspy, rhythmic sound filling your ears. The reason for this is that when we are diving, we are breathing compressed air under pressure. If that pressure changes, so does the volume of air. As we descend underwater, the pressure increases, compressing the air, swelling its density, causing us to inhale a higher volume of air than we would take in with a breath at the surface. When we ascend, the pressure decreases, and that compressed air, in response to the drop in pressure, starts to expand.

When we breathe normally, the expanding air is vented out naturally when we exhale.

If we hold our breath, our lungs do not inflate and deflate like they are designed to.

Our lungs are a fixed airspace, a flexible organ that can only hold a finite amount of air.

That held breath of air grows upon ascent, enlarging inside the lungs, unable to find a way out, filling them up until they can swell no further and, like a balloon that cannot hold another breath, they can rupture, causing a lung over-expansion injury that can turn fatal.

Lesson:. . . . . . . We hold our breath in life, maintaining our rigidity, not allowing ourselves to inhale new air and exhale the old. We are steadfast in our habits. We liked things a certain way and don’t want change. We are not meant to be uncompromising, inflexible, and unchanging, like the lungs stretching and straining under the confines of a held breath. We should accept the new in all its forms, accepting novel ideas and cultures and ways of thinking about things, eliminating old habits and prejudices and things we thought we knew.

When we move through life, the pressures are either increasing or decreasing, stresses are either heightening or diminishing. We need to remember to breathe. To take in all the new and good and unfamiliar regardless of what our depth is, and to release all the old and bad and comfortable, thereby making room for the new. If we hold onto the old for too long, it continues to fill us up, expanding and growing and getting bigger until we, unaware of its cultivation, burst at the seams. We should strive to immerse ourselves in new environments, surround ourselves with new pressures, growing and changing and adapting, and all the while remembering to breathe.

03) ->  Adjust Your Buoyancy in Small, Frequent Amounts

Balanced buoyancy, horizontal trim, that perfect composure of rising slightly on the inhale and faintly falling on the exhale, is what separates the good divers from the bad.

Any diver will tell you that, in order to find that perfect positioning, you have to adjust your buoyancy in small, frequent amounts. We do not need to press the inflator button for too long, filling the BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) with air that wants to bring us back to the surface. Little bursts will do, and the same goes for releasing air as our tank empties and we become more buoyant throughout the dive.

Moving the weights around little by little, trying new positions on each dive, finding that ideal spot on your body to bring yourself into a sleek, straight line is something that divers do the more and more they submerge themselves. We learn to minimize your movements, quick flicks of the fin to change direction, mostly floating and flowing along with the current, frog kicking to propel yourself along a constant plane running parallel to the ocean’s bottom.

Being able to control the body and maintaining jurisdiction over its movements and manoeuvres in the water is key to be able to spot microorganisms by getting close to coral without touching it. During diving, adjustments made too quickly or drastically, can have chaotic results. Power inflating the BCD, causing us to balloon to the surface, can result in bubbles forming in the blood. Using big, clumsy kicks as we swim along can either damage coral or disturb the visibility.

Lesson:………………… Having good buoyancy carries over into our lives. Making small, intentional movements brings about a sort of self-awareness that you cannot achieve with those big, drastic changes. Think of it as biting off more than we can chew. If we make too many big changes all at once, how will we ever figure out which variables yield desired results? Making small adjustments: try this today, try something else tomorrow, find what works to bring myself out of that feeling that everything around me is crashing.

This is a secret to moving through life: small adjustments, acting with intention, understanding what actions and thoughts make you feel certain ways. It is all a process of trial and error, moving our weights, practicing as much as we can, getting better with each new discovery.

04) -> Communicate with Proper Hand Signals

We all learn the universal hand signals: thumbs up means “I want to go up”, thumbs down means “lets dive deeper”, two fingers to the other hand’s palm is asking “how much air do you have”, and the thumb and pointer making an O with the other three fingers released is a question and an answer: “Are you okay?” and “yes, I’m okay”. The main thing here is that communication is key. In an underwater world where the tongue is tied, we have to be able to say what we want with the tools we have. And, we sometimes have had to learn how to read and understand people, not with words, but by how their eyes look behind their masks, sometimes wide and fearful, other times crinkled with a smiling excitement.

Not everyone speaks the same language and not everyone communicates the same way, but, as soon as we descend, letting that water wash over our heads, our language becomes universal, and being able to understand one another can make or break the dive.

Lesson:………………………………… The same is true in our normal lives. Communication is key. Almost every major problem, whether that be on an individual, communal, or global scale, is rooted in a conflict of communication. Different words and phrases have different meanings around the globe.  Listening to each other, establishing a norm, understanding the root of what someone is saying and the reason why they would be saying it that way is something that has challenged us all. We are all brought up differently, raised to believe different things, but at the end of the day we are all trying to communicate the same thing: this is me and I just want to be accepted.

Being empathetic and understanding other aspects of communication are vital to finding and providing that acceptance: reading the look in someone’s eyes, interpreting body language, deciphering why someone may be acting a certain way. We are all floating along in a sort of shared solitude, alone with our thoughts and interacting with others when we get the chance. But understanding each other, using those agreed upon hand signals and being aware of other cues, makes or breaks our time with each other.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Points 05 to 10- Link Below)

LESSONS IN BEHAVIOUR FROM SCUBA DIVING – (CHAPTER 02)

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa