Personality Isn't Permanent: Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story

by Benjamin P. Hardy

This is how successful people live: They become who they want to be by orienting their life toward their goals, not as a repeat of the past; by acting bravely as their future selves, not by perpetuating who they formerly were.

Diamandis calls this “MTP,” or “Massively Transformative Purpose.” The idea is simple: You have a purpose so big and inspiring that pursuing it transforms your entire life.

There is no such thing as a personality type. Personality types are social or mental constructions, not actual realities. The notion is a surface-level, discriminative, dehumanizing, and horribly inaccurate way of looking at the complexity of what is a human being.

type-based personality tests are unscientific—and would have you believe that you are essentially more limited than you really are. They portray an inaccurate and overly simplified portrait of people, filled with broad and sweeping generalizations, that anybody could feel relates to them.

The real lesson of the Myers-Briggs test is not some insight into your personality, but the incredible power of marketing. That’s the real brilliance of Myers-Briggs.

You are not a single and narrow “type” of person. In different situations and around different people, you are different. Your personality is dynamic, flexible, and contextual.

For those interested in improving themselves for a specific reason, recent science shows that such changes are possible. A 2015 study by Drs. Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley showed that personality can be intentionally changed through goal-setting and sustained personal effort. Research from Drs. Christopher Soto and Jule Specht shows that personality changes accelerate when people are leading meaningful and satisfying lives.

To say, “That’s just the way I am because of my past” is to declare you’re emotionally stuck in your past.

You become more psychologically flexible and emotionally evolved by facing your past, head-on, and by getting help from other people.

Like passion, motivation isn’t something to be discovered, but to be created through proactive and forward action.

Without a deep sense of purpose, your personality will be based on avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure, which is an animalistic and low-level mode of operating.

As you proactively and intentionally make positive decisions, develop skills, and seek out new experiences, your personality will develop and change in meaningful ways.

Being authentic is about being honest, and being honest is about facing the truth, not justifying your limitations because you don’t want to be uncomfortable have hard conversations.

Spending your days on activities leading you to something incredibly important, something you truly value, is how you live without regret.

Knowledge is key to setting goals. You can’t pursue something you don’t know exists. Exposure is the first source of goals.

Don’t avoid experiences that will shape and transform you. Your future self must be stronger, wiser, and more capable than your current self. That can only happen through rigorous, challenging, and new experiences.

When I was fifteen years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say, “Who’s your hero?” And I said . . . “You know who it is? It’s me in ten years.” So I turned twenty-five. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, “So, are you a hero?” And I was like, “Not even close! No, no, no.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because my hero’s me at thirty-five.” So you see, every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero’s always ten years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me, because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.

Another reason to commit to specific results is that it clarifies your identity. Your identity comes from your goals. Being totally bought-in and clear about the end you have in mind instills a deep sense of purpose. You can imagine your future self in the position you want to be.

When you commit to a specific outcome, you’re forced to get better. Your results speak for themselves. If your results aren’t getting better, then you should question how interested or committed you are to this thing. You’ll know you’re serious about improving your results when you really begin tracking everything you do, down to the minutest detail. As Pearson’s Law states, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

When you commit to a bigger future, you’re forced to improve how you spend your evenings and mornings. The end of the day is a time for relaxation and reflection, not unhealthy consumption.

Life becomes a lot more exciting and less repetitive when your future self becomes your daily mission, rather than avoiding uncertainty and change. Avoid consumption at night. Create peak experiences in the morning.

There’s one more crucial thing you’ll want to do to properly get yourself in the right mindset, and that’s starting your writing from a place of gratitude and abundance. The effects of gratitude journaling are well documented. Research has shown that gratitude consistently improves people’s emotional well-being. The regular practice of writing and reframing through gratitude can transform depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts. Gratitude has been found to heal and transform relationships. In almost every way imaginable, gratitude has been found to help.

Instead of even trying, they convince themselves to simply go for something else—something less risky and more certain. As the author Robert Brault said, “We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”

If you keep that refractory period going for weeks and months, you’ve developed a temperament. If you keep that same refractory period going on for years, it’s called a personality trait. When we begin to develop personality traits based on our emotions, we’re living in the past, and that’s where we get stuck. Teaching ourselves and our children to shorten the refractory period frees us to move through life without obstruction.

And even if it turned out that he did have limited views of her, she might have come to realize the truth of Eleanor Roosevelt’s words: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

When others approach her and ask how they can help family and friends in situations similar to hers, she always answers with the same response: Listen to them, ask good questions, never judge, and never advise. These are the key principles to being an empathetic witness.

If you’re going to create a powerful future, you’ll experience an intense amount of failures, heartaches, bad days, and pain along the way. You need a team of empathetic witnesses. You need people who encourage you to keep going—people who encourage you to dream big and encourage your work when others don’t understand.

Being an empathetic witness is about being interested, not interesting. Empathetic listening can’t be done in haste. It must be done out of love. Even if you will never truly understand where the other person is coming from, you need to want to understand. When done correctly, the listener’s core motivation is to understand and encourage. Time is allowed for each person to open up and process their perspectives. Solutions or advice are not presented, at least initially. Instead, open-ended and sincere questions are asked. When the questions have been answered, the listener continues asking for more information and insight, with questions like: “Can you explain more for me?” “What do you mean by that?” “Why was that part so important?” “Have you given up on the idea of a better future?” “What positives have come from this?” “How will your future be different because of this?” “What can you do now to move forward?” “How can I help?”

According to Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, when your “status” becomes more important than your “growth,” you usually stop growing. However, when growth is your genuine motive, then you usually end up getting lots of status. But you won’t be attached to it. And you’ll definitely be willing to destroy a former status to create a new one. As Sullivan says, “Always make your future bigger than your past.”

The meaning we derive from our experiences and the information we gather shapes our worldview. It’s important to note that as people, we usually shape meaning first about ourselves, and then use our self-image as the lens through which we view the world. As Dr. Stephen Covey said, “We see the world, not as it is, but as we are.” If you have a negative view of yourself, then you probably have a negative view of the world. If you have a positive view of yourself, then you probably have a positive view of the world. The world is viewed through the lens of your identity.

The first step of emotional regulation is identifying and labeling your emotions as you’re experiencing them (the more descriptive the better). You can’t manage something you’re not aware of.

The second step of emotional regulation is understanding the difference between primary emotions and secondary emotions.

The third step of emotional regulation is letting go of negative emotions. Accepting and acknowledging that you’re feeling negative is key to letting the feeling go, rather than pretending you’re not feeling it.

People often make stupid decisions because they act based on their emotions in the moment, rather than on the consequences that will come after. For example, binge-eating cookies while stressed may initially feel good but will ultimately create negative consequences.

History gets revised all the time with new perspectives, experience, and understanding. If your own past hasn’t changed, then you’re still stuck inside of it. You’re not evolving and growing.

In psychology, “decision fatigue” is one way in which our willpower gets exhausted, using up our mental resources to weigh the pros and cons of every decision as we encounter them. Decision fatigue can be avoided by making a committed choice. For instance, because Nate decided he was going to be sugar-free for life, he no longer had to decide in various situations whether or not he was going to eat sugar. The decision had already been made, and thus decision fatigue—weighing the options and potential outcomes—was no longer a problem.

Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen has said, “It’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time.” When you’re only 98 percent committed to something, then you haven’t truly decided. As a result, you’re required to continue making decisions in every future situation you’re in, weighing in every instance whether this particular situation falls into the 2 percent of exceptions you’ve allowed yourself. In every situation you’re in, you’re not actually sure what the outcome will be in terms of your behavior and decision-making.

As you begin acting as your future self, you will eventually become that future self. Your personality will adapt itself to your goals, and you’ll have the characteristics, attributes, and circumstances you want. In order to do so, you must make your future self the new standard for your daily behavior. You must say no to current-self opportunities and options and forgo them for future-self ones. Your future self is the new standard.

You have to feel that you deserve good things or else your subconscious might very well sabotage all your best efforts. If you don’t truly feel that you deserve great financial success, then you are battling an almost insurmountable obstacle: your subconscious. Giving regular gifts from your income to charity is one excellent way of once and for all, persuading your subconscious that you deserve what lies ahead. In this way, it will not only end its sabotage, it will begin actively to assist in your quest. —Rabbi Daniel Lapin

giving money away can and does have a tangible and powerful impact on your subconscious. It sends a powerful signal to yourself that you are the type of person who gives to others.

Putting yourself in new environments, around new people, and taking on new roles is one of the quickest ways to change your personality, for better or worse. Fully take on the roles you assume, and you’ll change from the outside in.

you need to be strategic about what you remember. You need an environment that continuously calls to mind your future self. If your environment doesn’t continuously bring your future self to the forefront, then your environment is activating a different you.

“Do what is right, let the consequences follow.” “Better prolific than perfect.” “You make or break your life before eight a.m.” “100 percent is easier than 98 percent.” “Expect everything and attach to nothing.” “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled.” “You can’t be free without uncertainty.” “What got you here won’t get you there.” “Never be the former anything.” “Embrace your future to change your past.” “Gratitude changes things.” “Good timber does not grow with ease.” “Nothing happens until after the boats are burned.”

If you’re serious about achieving goals and intentionally moving forward in your life, you must create an environment that shields you from most of the world. Strategic ignorance is not about being closed-minded. It’s about knowing what you want and knowing that, as a person, you can be easily swayed or derailed. Rather than putting yourself in stupid situations and being forced to rely on willpower due to lack of planning, you simply avoid stupid situations. You even avoid amazing situations that you know are ultimately a distraction to becoming your desired future self.

In order to create an environment that shields you from the distractions in this world, you need to know what you want. You need to know what you stand for. You need to have rules and systems that stop you from finding yourself in a mire of filth or the daze of endless opportunity. You need to make one decision that makes a million other decisions either easier, automatic, or irrelevant. This is how you remove decision fatigue.