Should You Stop Trying to Change Yourself?

Change is much harder than the change industry would have us believe. Many shrinks, how-to writers, and TV exhorters from Oprah to Suze Orman to Rick Warren make it sound easy: "Just do what I say."

It ain't that easy, at least for my clients and for me:

My cold-call reluctant clients rarely get comfortable cold-calling. My math-challenged clients rarely become good at math. My shy clients rarely become social.

I know I should eat broccoli not cheese, be laid-back not intense, cheerful not dour, but I can't make myself do any of them for very long. Nothing helps: reminders, accountability, looking at supposed childhood roots, nothing.

We are mainly a function of our genes and early environment. Defying those ain't easy. So might we all be wiser to  accept ourselves basically as-is and simply find the work, relationships, and recreations that don't require us to make major changes?

You can tune-up a Prius all we like but it will never win a race against a Porsche.  But a Prius, in its context, is most worthy in itself.