Self Improvement & Personality Shifts.

[sassafras]

I'll readily admit I've become a regular passenger aboard the 'self-help' train. I'm always looking for new ways to tweak my behaviors, keep procrastination and anxiety in check, to make myself more assertive, more goal-oriented. These are the little things that only enhance who I originally am, but what if you were to make drastic changes?

I know that beliefs and behaviors can be changed if you practise self-awareness and keep these new behaviors/beliefs in check long enough for them to become a habit, but to what extent do you think these factors influence personality? If you change enough things about yourself (and how would you go about doing that?) is it possible for you to change your personality and perhaps, even your type?

I've seen an argument on both sides for this particular question. I'm wondering what your personal take on it is.

 

[Tamagochi]

I am also interested in self-help material - especially in areas of organizing, psychology and exercising. While in theory anything is possible, in practice I just sort through the material and take the pieces that already suit my natural style. Techniques that feel "foreign" simply do not work for me in the long turn, so I'm not influenced by them.

Changing character type - if at all possible - is a really big shift in someone's personality. A task equivalent to changing one's sexual preference perhaps. At least it doesn't happen accidentally.

 

[IndigoSensor]

For me, this stuff happens when I don't really activly try to do anything about it. Life seems to give me a kick in the pants to push me to do something about it. Looking back in hindsight about past behaivors that you do that you find unreasonable is a good start. Just focus on those, and when you catch yourself doing them, stop doing them.

 

[slant]

Dude...Everything I do is because I decide to do it for some random whim I have. And the reason why whims happen is because I get bored; this is likely because of my age, but even when I did have a lot of things going on and I was occupied I still had to do certain things, act of these whims. What other people call self improvement, I call random decisions. I don't sit and think for a long time 'this is how I'm going to improve myself' I think, what do I want? And then I decide 'I want to be able to stop drinking soda for ___ amount of years' or 'I just want to stop doing all of these things together and see if I can do it' sometimes it's 'I'm going to start doing this for no apparent reason'. Anyway, the point is, that it's all a form of self improvement because eventually I learn something from all of it. Sometimes it's not really obvious, but hey. Life is a whole bunch of self improvements. People get too involved in other people and trying to change them; their family, friends, spouse, etc. It's not like you can ever have complete touch with yourself, but there's a certain amount of desperateness in being too absorbed in the people around you. So self improvement, focus on self, is really the only way you're going to be happy. Once you've focused on self for long enough you have these whims, and then you act on them, and then you got what you got. Hopefully these whims don't end you up with a pile of bills to pay, or worse: children.