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How much of our personality do you think we can change by will?
Most? Only a little? Just our attitude?
Most? Only a little? Just our attitude?
How much of our nature is changeable by our own hand?
- Thread starter KazeCraven
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I tend to think that personality/nature is pretty static for a person and once they hit between 20-25 years old it pretty much locks into place. That being said, part of this is I am "bothered" by the fact that people claim to change themselves so radically from the inside. I feel that one can grow and develop and alter their nature with a set of paramaters, but they can not outright change something. If you have a violent temper, you can control it to the point where it seems to vanish. That being said, it is exceedingly rate (if not impossible) to remove it from your persona outright, no matter how much effort you put into it.
I have problems with anxiety. I know that this will forever be part of me until the day I die. I can learn to control it and live with it, but I can not remove it. It indeed is part of my nature. I know this tends to make it sounds like self improvement is therefore futile, but that is not the case at all. There are just somethings that are inate and static that can't be removed. You can add stuff to your nature with some ease, but removing it, is a much harder if not impossible matter.
I have problems with anxiety. I know that this will forever be part of me until the day I die. I can learn to control it and live with it, but I can not remove it. It indeed is part of my nature. I know this tends to make it sounds like self improvement is therefore futile, but that is not the case at all. There are just somethings that are inate and static that can't be removed. You can add stuff to your nature with some ease, but removing it, is a much harder if not impossible matter.
With the proper understanding, I suspect all of it.
For example, balancing the fear of rejection with the fear of relationship isolations seem to determine the extraversion / introversion output, as far as I can tell. Just apply the abstract theory and have fun.
I dont think it's very changeable... i think it can be 'understood' and mitigated or accentuated as desired; and with age and experience comes a mellowing (or I suppose, in some cases, worsening) of our bad sides... but, no, minus having rebar accidentally shot through our skull (thus changing our personality entirely, as has happened once or twice), I don't think our nature is VERY malleable.
Before you can change anything, it seems you would have to recognize first a need to change. Sure, we all change a little here and there over time, and that would seem to be the role of experience. We get wiser. Before we can change any negative aspect of our personality, don't we hve to first recognize that something needs to be changed? This is where crisis has played an important part in my life and in the integration of my personality. I got to the point that I recognized that the way I was thinking, my attitudes, weren't working any more. This is a shock, and can lead to great dispair and a huge sense of loss of self. At that point, if you are so motivated, it becomes a matter of taking yourself apart, throwing away the crap, and putting yourself back together again. Life then goes on, and you see things through different eyes. You can then move on in your life as a more integrated human being.
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Ah, but see how much of that change is something that we are in control of? Perhaps we do change through life, but then does that mean our personality, insofar as it changes, is just a product of our environment?
It's difficult to know what is constant and what is changeable, because it may vary from person to person. There are some, who try to change but can't and then there are those who are chameleons.
As a person, I think there are some constants. At this point, I realize that there are some things which are simply me, meaning they are aspects of my personality which will always be a dominant force in how I think or live. But then there are those things which change, such as temperament and attitude which can be changed depending on how we feel or what we know about ourselves, experiences, and our abilities.
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I would say personality is pretty set but levels of consciousness can grow depending on individual development and one's desire for improvement in areas of their personality. I tend to look at it on a continuum basis rather than a static choice between two extremes.
For example; the two opposites extroversion and introversion are quit extreme on the personality scale. An individual who is 90% introverted in their lives can work to increase their extroversion by a little bit;lets say become 5% more extroverted. Hence this can result in dynamic social changes such as new friendship development, better communication with peers, family, etc. The change can be small as 5% or large as 30% if one is willing to take risks and be courageous if they desire to be more balanced on the introversion and extroversion scale.
Same thing can be said bout extroverted people wanting to be more introverted but we all know that individuals make small progress slowly and not giant leaps into extremes in order to find a happy medium and balance in one's personality as you age.
For example; the two opposites extroversion and introversion are quit extreme on the personality scale. An individual who is 90% introverted in their lives can work to increase their extroversion by a little bit;lets say become 5% more extroverted. Hence this can result in dynamic social changes such as new friendship development, better communication with peers, family, etc. The change can be small as 5% or large as 30% if one is willing to take risks and be courageous if they desire to be more balanced on the introversion and extroversion scale.
Same thing can be said bout extroverted people wanting to be more introverted but we all know that individuals make small progress slowly and not giant leaps into extremes in order to find a happy medium and balance in one's personality as you age.
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At will, we can probably only change our acceptance/rejection/complacency/etc with our personalities instantly.
As for any significant REAL changes - they require long habituation by ongoing exposure to good/positive experiences which fall significantly outside what we usually regard as agreeable. For instance, to develop true extroversion (in degree, not in absolute terms) one needs regular, enjoyable, positive outgoing, social experiences. The effort involved to arrange these experiences - and their contingency on the behaviour of others (at least in respect of Extroversion) makes it seem that very few people actually every would change their personality significantly.
As for any significant REAL changes - they require long habituation by ongoing exposure to good/positive experiences which fall significantly outside what we usually regard as agreeable. For instance, to develop true extroversion (in degree, not in absolute terms) one needs regular, enjoyable, positive outgoing, social experiences. The effort involved to arrange these experiences - and their contingency on the behaviour of others (at least in respect of Extroversion) makes it seem that very few people actually every would change their personality significantly.
I have to say I'm surprised at most of the answers here.
You can change pretty much anything about yourself. I assure you this is a fact
Your brain learns VERY quickly. It only takes one bad experience to give someone a phobia that can last a lifetime. This same phobia can be undone in about ten minutes. I know for a fact that this works
Different things take different levels of effort for sure but it is almost all changeable.
Simply wishing you were different doesn't work. Your brain learns by experience and imagination. Not conscious desire.
Belief is very important in change. If you believe it can be done then you are probably right. If you believe it can't be done then without even realising it you will sabotage your own attempts to do it.
People change all the time. Some more successfully than others but it only takes one person to do it to prove it's possible.
To disprove the myth that all crows are black you need only find one white crow
You can change pretty much anything about yourself. I assure you this is a fact
Your brain learns VERY quickly. It only takes one bad experience to give someone a phobia that can last a lifetime. This same phobia can be undone in about ten minutes. I know for a fact that this works
Different things take different levels of effort for sure but it is almost all changeable.
Simply wishing you were different doesn't work. Your brain learns by experience and imagination. Not conscious desire.
Belief is very important in change. If you believe it can be done then you are probably right. If you believe it can't be done then without even realising it you will sabotage your own attempts to do it.
People change all the time. Some more successfully than others but it only takes one person to do it to prove it's possible.
To disprove the myth that all crows are black you need only find one white crow
Depends on how much we expected it in the first place, if talking subjectively. Objectively, though; I think a lot. Even if not all or comprehensively, a lot of ourselves can still be changed, or at least, grown. That being said.. I'm guessing that all of us gained comprehension and refinement, say; growing, rather than changing. With each knowledge we gain, we know boundaries and set them, or in some cases, open them. Possibilities are opened or closed. Insights are gained, or renewed.
[MENTION=387]IndigoSensor[/MENTION]; pardon me, but doesn't the persona you mentioned is about outward appearance? If so, wouldn't that be very easy to pull a non-violent persona? It's the subconscious that affect the outward appearances, and that I agreed is very hard to do without a change of situations and circumstances.
This whole question is so conceptual, and there is no hard proof (or even clarity) that the main concepts in it even exist (or what they are). Such as: personality, nature, attitude, will.
It's essentially separating your sense of self into what you "are" (which again could be an illusion, since you change) and what you "want" to be (which people assume comes from within, mysteriously, when there's no physical explanation how that happens, and seems way more reasonable to assume it happens entirely by reflecting the outside).
I find it also interesting that people differ a lot in their priority towards what we call will - for some it is the main driving force, for others it isn't. I wish I knew precisely why that difference is.
It's essentially separating your sense of self into what you "are" (which again could be an illusion, since you change) and what you "want" to be (which people assume comes from within, mysteriously, when there's no physical explanation how that happens, and seems way more reasonable to assume it happens entirely by reflecting the outside).
I find it also interesting that people differ a lot in their priority towards what we call will - for some it is the main driving force, for others it isn't. I wish I knew precisely why that difference is.
One can change by however much one believes they can change. 
There is quite a lot of evidence of the ability to change based on current neuroscience. Of course, if you have an abnormally small amygdala or fewer mirror neurons than average, a defective hippocampus, PFC, or other biological structures that differ significantly from average, then those will have effects that may not be immediately changeable yet.
There is quite a lot of evidence of the ability to change based on current neuroscience. Of course, if you have an abnormally small amygdala or fewer mirror neurons than average, a defective hippocampus, PFC, or other biological structures that differ significantly from average, then those will have effects that may not be immediately changeable yet.
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One can change by however much one believes they can change.
There is quite a lot of evidence of the ability to change based on current neuroscience.
If i could plus rep you for this i would
Belief is key. The placebo effect is incredibly powerful
Isn't introspection a key here? How can we change things that are negative in our personalities if we aren't aware of the behavior in the first place? How far into ourselves are we willing to go to root out those aspects of our personality that don't serve us well? Not only do we need to think deeply, but we need to think precisely as well. So, once again, we get back to perceptions and misperceptions about ourselves and the reality we find ourselves in. It gets down to self-perception. How accurate are our perceptions? As in most things, the devil is in the details.