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

by Benjamin P. Hardy

Yes, people’s behavior can appear to be, and often is, predictable and consistent over time. But the reason for that consistency is not a fixed and unalterable personality. Instead, there are four far deeper reasons, which keep people stuck in patterns: They continue to be defined by past traumas that haven’t been reframed. They have an identity narrative based on the past, not the future. Their subconscious keeps them consistent with their former self and emotions. They have an environment supporting their current rather than future identity.

Our past, like any experience or event, is a subjective perspective, which we ourselves ascribe meaning to—whether positive or negative, good or bad. Without question, experiences from our past can and do impact us. But it isn’t actually our past that is impacting us, but our present interpretation and emotional attachment to that past. To say, “That’s just the way I am because of my past” is to declare you’re emotionally stuck in your past.

By continually avoiding our past traumas and the emotions they create, our life becomes an unhealthy and repetitive pattern. When this is the case, then, yes, our past does become an accurate predictor of our future. It’s not because personality is unchanging, but rather because we’re avoiding that change. Lessons are repeated, learned.

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. If you’re still angry with your parents for your childhood, for example, this speaks more to who you currently are than what actually happened in your childhood. To continue blaming any person or event from the past makes you the victim, and reflects more on you than whoever or whatever it is you’re blaming.

In the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, author Cal Newport argues that rather than trying to find your passion, you should instead develop rare and valuable skills. Find a need and begin filling it. Once you’ve developed skills and begin seeing success, passion comes as an organic by-product, or an indirect effect. As he writes, “Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.” Newport’s perspectives on passion dovetail exactly with the research on motivation. Like passion, motivation isn’t something to be discovered, but to be created through proactive and forward action. Both passion and motivation are effects, not causes. As Dr. Jerome Bruner, a Harvard psychologist, said, “You more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.” As stated previously, confidence is the same way. You can’t have it first; it must come as a by-product of chosen and goal-consistent action.

Purpose trumps personality. 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. This is the common view and approach to personality for most. However, when you’re driven by purpose, you’ll be highly flexible and you’ll make decisions irrespective of pain and pleasure to create and become what you want. Moreover, if you are serious about your purpose, it will change your personality. Your purpose isn’t something you discover, but something you ultimately choose for yourself. Stop looking for it and make the choice, then allow that choice to transform you. Rather than your decisions and goals being the by-product of your personality, your personality should become the by-product of your decisions and goals. As you proactively and intentionally make positive decisions, develop skills, and seek out new experiences, your personality will develop and change in meaningful ways. It will adapt to the level of your goals and decisions, rather than your decisions and goals falling to the level of your current personality. Trying to discover your personality leads to inaction, avoidance of hard conversations, distracting yourself through consumption, and making excuses for how you’re currently living. It puts you in the passenger seat of your own life. Instead, you can, and should, be the driver. You can be the creator.

According to Cal Newport, the idea of finding your passion is based on self-absorption. People want to find work they are passionate about because they’ve been taught to believe that work is all about and for them. The most successful people in the world know that work is about helping and creating value for other people. As Newport states, “If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (‘what can the world offer me?’) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (‘what can I offer the world?’).”

Rather than adapting to difficult situations, we lazily apply labels to ourselves, such as “introvert” to justify our lack of willingness, openness, and commitment in various scenarios. As a result, we fall to the level of our labels rather than rise to the level of our commitment. In turn, we avoid conflict, difficulty, and newness, boxing ourselves into a shallow perspective of ourselves. We stunt our growth. We only do what brings instant gratification or immediate results.

The less you hold on to mistakes or painful experiences, the better you’re able to adapt to what the situation requires and perform in order to achieve your goals. What happened in the past doesn’t impact the next thing you do, or stop you from being entirely present in this moment. The more psychologically flexible you are, the faster you can let things go. The less psychologically flexible you are, the longer you hold on to even small things.

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.”

Meaning is shaped during emotional experiences. According to the famed psychologist Dr. Roy Baumeister, meaning is a mental representation of relationships between events or things. “Meaning connects things,” Baumeister explains. Dr. Crystal Park, an expert on the psychology of meaning and meaning-making, argues that human beings create meaning from our experiences by connecting three things: First, we define the cause of the event or experience. (“What just happened?”)

Second, we link that cause with our own identity. (“What does this experience say about me?”) Finally, we link that cause and our identity with the bigger picture of how the world and universe work. (“What does this experience and who I am say about the world?”)

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. Primary emotions are your initial reactions to external events. You shouldn’t judge them. They are natural reactions to things around us. For example, being sad when a loved one dies, or being frustrated in traffic, are natural initial responses. A secondary emotion is when you feel something about the feeling itself. For example, you may feel anger about being hurt, or shame about your anxiety. Secondary emotions increase the intensity of your reactions and can push you into destructive behaviors. Hence, part of becoming psychologically flexible is holding your initial reaction loosely—not taking it too seriously or overly identifying with it, but acknowledging it, labeling it, and then deciding how you want to interpret and feel about the experience. 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. You then want to step back from the emotion and consider the consequences of acting on it. Usually, the consequences aren’t in line with the values and goals of your future self.

The story you tell yourself and others is about your future self—your ideal. But when it comes to short-term measuring of progress, you want to look back on where you were before. The purpose of measuring the gain regularly is to see the progress you’re making. By seeing progress, you feel movement and momentum. This increases your confidence and sense of morale to continue pursuing a future self beyond anything you’ve been before.

Your environment should be full of strategic reminders of who you want to be, helping you to become your desired future self.

Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.

lot of things intentionally. I don’t want to be influenced that much.” It