the MOUSE
Bones don't lie, Mosley. See you in Animal Park
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- Sep 27, 2023
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Myth #1: Personality can be categorized into âtypes.â
There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.â Carl Jung
Personality types are social constructions. The notion of a personality type is a discriminative, dehumanizing, and inaccurate way of looking at the complexity of human beings.
Take the Myers-Briggs personality test.
It was created by Myers and Briggs at their home and based on their experience with people. They invented the idea that if you reacted in such a way, it wasnât based on the fact that you had acquired this trait, but that it had always been there âinside of youâ.
These personality tests damage your future by imprisoning you in a label.
âHenry is an introvert, so he will never be good at public speakingâ.
These types of statements often become self-fulfilling prophecies, hence making the personality test ârelevantâ.
While labels (writer) can serve goals (becoming a writer), goals (writer) can never serve labels (becoming a writer). The idea that you have to achieve something to become that thing may forever prevent you from achieving it.
Your personality should come from your goals. Not the other way around. To quote Paul Graham, âthe more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.â
Abandon all labels that are preventing you from becoming who you are. Lazy, dumb, scaredâŚabandon it now. Itâs only limiting you. You are nothing, and can become anything.
Hereâs why.
Researchers found a strong correlation between social roles and personality types.
If the social role demanded that one person exhibits one of the five personality traits (remember OCEAN for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), they would usually develop that trait.
It was the fact that they needed to develop that trait that made them harbor it, not the other way around.
Should we put these people that developed these traits into different social contexts, their personalities would change depending on their roles (see the Stanford prison experiment).
Careful though! It is not âsocietyâ that is deciding who you are.
What we mean here is that you become who you need to become according to the situation in which you are.
People that do not become who they want do not proactively seek goals to become who they want to be.
For example, a 2015 study by Drs. Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley showed that personality can be intentionally changed through goal-setting and sustained personal effort.
Intentional change, however, is emotionally rigorousâit doesnât exactly feel good and can even be shockingly painful.
If youâre unwilling to put yourself through emotional experiences, shift your perspective, and make purposeful changes to your behavior and environment, then donât expect huge changes (at least in the short run).
Becoming psychologically flexible is key to personal transformation. It helps with not over-attaching yourself to your current identity or perspectives.
Becoming insatiably committed to a future purpose and embracing emotions rather than avoiding them is how radical change occurs.
Who are you?
In what ways have you defined yourself or others by what was done in the past?
Have you limited and overly defined yourself by categorizing or typifying yourself?
What would happen if you stopped boxing yourself into a category and opened yourself to the possibility of change?
Myth #2: Personality Is Innate and Fixed
In a study made over sixty years, researchers tested the personality of the same group of people (on the OCEAN scale).
When they discovered the results, they were shocked.
People kept on rating differently year after year.
-> people are highly adaptive.
Even after going through extreme change, we quickly adapt to that change and it becomes our new norm (see the Hedonic Treadmill theory).
Hence, we may feel like the same person as we age and gradually change, but we arenât actually the same at all.
Life feels ânormalâ as it keeps on going, while in fact, it may be completely different from the past.
Quick question: How much time do you spend imagining your future self?
For most people, the answer is ânot muchâ. What we have learned so far described two major obstacles that prevent people from creating their future personalities.
We assume our present personality is a finished product.
We overemphasize the importance of the past, which leads us to become increasingly narrow in how we view ourselves and the world.
Since you know your personality changes regardless, itâs time you decide who you want to be so you can achieve your goals.
Itâs time you take your own personality into your own hands.
This is the power of choices. It is time to choose what your future self wants, not your present self.
Who you want to be in the future is more important than who you are now â and it should inform who you are now.
Itâs like a walk. If you intend to walk from Paris to Moscow, what would be your focus?
Moscow, obviously.
You should consider the present from a future vantage point.
Life starts taking on a whole new meaning when you begin thinking right now about what your future self will want.
Rather than making decisions based on your current identity, you should make decisions based on your future identity.
Itâs your responsibility to set your future self up for as much opportunity, success, and joy as possible.
This is how you become the person and create the life you want, rather than becoming someone with regret.
Who is your future self?
How often do you imagine and consciously design your future identity?
What would happen if you based your identity on who you want to be, rather than who youâve been?
Myth #3: Personality Comes from Your Past
âCausal determinismâ is the idea that whatever happens now is directly caused by a past event or condition.
From this view, people are determinedânot influencedâby prior events, like one domino in a toppling chain.
Where does this idea come from?
In looking at human behavior, psychologists have come to agree that the best way to predict future behavior is by looking at past behavior.
And in fact, that phenomenon is validated over and over again. It seems people are quite predictable over time.
But why?
4 reasons.
They continue to be defined by past traumas that havenât been reframed or dealt with.
They have an identity narrative based on their past, not the future.
Their subconscious keeps them consistent with their former self and emotions.
They have an environment supporting their present rather than future identity (âfriendsâ and family members shaming you for attempting something different).
These are the four levers that drive personality.
And guess what? You can control them.
When you change, reframe, or manage these levers, your personality and life will change.
Hereâs a story explaining why your past does not determine your present.
Tucker Max was a party boy and author who sold millions of books about his adventures. Then he made a movie.
Predictably, the movie bombed. That crushed Tuckerâs ego. He went to therapy for three years, then released a statement saying he no longer identified with the person in the books.
As such, when he reads himself, he only feels empathy for that guy that wrote the words. He is not embarrassed one bit, or ashamed by who he was because who he was is another person than who he is now.
When you begin to actively and intentionally move forward in your life, not only does your future get better but your past does as well.
Your past increasingly becomes something happening for you, not to you.
If your view of your own past hasnât changed much over recent months or years, then you havenât learned enough.
An unchanging past is a sign of emotional detachment and rigidityâan avoidance of facing the truth and moving forward in your life.
The more mature you become as a person, the more differently youâll view your past experiences.
But how can the past change?
Imagine getting a 10% raise.
Nice! You decide to celebrate and eat lunch with your colleague Mary.
Mary is excited! She also got a raise ofâŚ15%.
Suddenly, that 10% you were happy about does not seem so good in retrospect!!!
This outlines how instead of the past shaping the present, the present shapes the past.
The present is so complex that even that, we are not sure of. The way you remember your past is only one way, and certainly not the objective version of the events that happened.
When you allow yourself to fully relive your past and process the emotions that were then unprocessed, you change it, you let it go, free yourself, and can then move forward.
Context Is Everything
Our past is subjective because we give it meaning.
If we donât challenge it, the interpretation and emotional attachment impact us.
Trauma happens to all of us, both in large and small degrees.
When our trauma is unresolved, we stop moving forward in our lives.
We become emotionally rigid and shut off, and thus stop learning, evolving, and changing.
By continually avoiding our past traumas and the emotions they create, our life becomes an unhealthy and repetitive pattern.
We get stuck.
But as we open up and reframe the trauma, we can take a positive and mature view of the past.
The present and future then stop reflecting the past. We are free from the trauma.
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.
When you keep on blaming someone or something from the past, that makes you a victim, and that reflects more on you now than whoever or whatever it is youâre blaming.
âChanging your pastâ doesnât mean you discount the emotional charge of these experiences!
It means you change its interpretation.
As Marcel Proust said, âThe real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.â
In order to change your past, you need to become more psychologically flexible.
Psychological flexibility is the skill of being fluid and adaptive, holding your emotions loosely, and moving toward your goals.
The more flexible you become, the less youâll be overwhelmed or stopped by emotions. Instead, youâll embrace and learn from them.
The less emotionally developed and flexible a person is, the more they will avoid hard experiences; the more theyâll be limited and defined by painful experiences from their past.
This is counterintuitive, as many people come to believe the best way to deal with hard experiences is by burying their emotions and fighting a silent battle, alone.
This is not the way. Consider this quote from Emile Zola.
âIf you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.â
Emotions should not be buried. They are the doorway to growth and learning.
The reason peopleâs personalities plateau and get stuck in repetitive cycles is because they are avoiding the difficult and challenging emotions involved in learning and in connecting with themselves and others.
As a result, they remain weighted down by their limited perceptions of their past for far longer than necessary.
What stories are you telling about your past self?
Who was your former self?
In what ways are you different from your former self?
How has your past changed due to more recent experiences?
How would your life be different if your past was something happening for you rather than to you?
How could life change if you embraced the truth that your former and current selves are two fundamentally different people?
How would your life be if you never again blamed or limited yourself and your future based on the past?
Myth #4: Personality Must Be Discovered
Personality is built, not discovered.
Passion about something is developed, not uncovered.
As Dr. Jerome Bruner, a Harvard psychologist said âyou are more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.â
Good feelings are a consequence, not a cause. When you receive a salary from your job, you get paid after working for a month, not before. The salary is a payout the same way passion and motivation are a payout.
As such, the author describes wanting passion before putting in the work as, and I quote, âget-rich-quick thinking and completely lazy.â
Passion is the prize, but you have to invest first. Personality is no different. It is not something you discover but rather something you create through your actions and behaviors.
Personality is a by-product of your decisions in life. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or Lincoln did not do what they did because of who they were. They became who they became because of what they did.
Purpose Trumps Personality
Without a deep sense of purpose, your personality will be based on avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure, which is an animalistic mode of operating.
When youâre driven by purpose, youâll be highly flexible and youâll 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 isnât something you discover, but something you ultimately choose for yourself.
Stop looking for it and make the choice, then let the choice transform you.
As you proactively 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 the other way around.
Donât Try To Find Out How You Are â Choose It!
Trying to discover your personality leads to inaction, avoidance of hard conversations, distracting yourself through consumption, and making excuses for how youâre currently living.
It puts you in the passenger seat of your own life.
Instead, you should be the driver.
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 theyâve been taught to believe that work is all about and for them.
However, the most successful people in the world know that work is about helping and creating value for other people.
As Newport states, âIf you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (âwhat can the world offer me?â) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (âwhat can I offer the world?â).â
The author takes the same approach to marriage and relationships.
While there needs to be a connection at the beginning, a successful marriage is not something life owes you â it is something you build!
Marry for aligned purpose, not personality, because personality will change over time. Purpose, however, will transform you and your partner over time.
What purpose are you creating for yourself?
What would happen if you stopped trying to find yourself, and instead became more creative and collaborative?
How would your personality develop and change if you went to work on it, chiseling and shaping it in desired ways?
Who would you be if you could creatively design yourself? (Hint, hint: You can.)
Myth #5: Personality Is Your True and âAuthenticâ Self
Another problem with the âfixed viewâ of personality is that people feel entitled to do only the things that feel natural or easy to them. The things âthey were born forâ.
If something is hard, difficult, or awkward, then people say, âI shouldnât have to do this.â
People believe they have an âauthentic selfâ which is who they should remain true to.
This self is seen as innate, the ârealâ them.
Unfortunately, this reveals a fixed mindset, and is often a reaction to a trauma or a lack of healthy connection to parents.
âAuthenticityâ these days is simply another way of saying âI am lazyâ or âI am like that and wonât change.â
That prevents people from improving and getting out of their comfort zone.
Who do you really want to become?
What would happen if you stopped trying to be âauthentic,â and instead faced the truth of why youâre limiting yourself?
What would happen if you had hard conversations with the important people in your life?
What would happen if you were âtrueâ to your future self, not your current fears?
Your personality is not fixed or inherent. It is malleable and flexible, and it is something you can shape yourself.
When you understand the four levers that move it, you become the driver of your identity. You can transform yourself and achieve your goals. You can become flexible.
Your past and your future can increasingly become a story that you shape and define.
There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.â Carl Jung
Personality types are social constructions. The notion of a personality type is a discriminative, dehumanizing, and inaccurate way of looking at the complexity of human beings.
Take the Myers-Briggs personality test.
It was created by Myers and Briggs at their home and based on their experience with people. They invented the idea that if you reacted in such a way, it wasnât based on the fact that you had acquired this trait, but that it had always been there âinside of youâ.
These personality tests damage your future by imprisoning you in a label.
âHenry is an introvert, so he will never be good at public speakingâ.
These types of statements often become self-fulfilling prophecies, hence making the personality test ârelevantâ.
While labels (writer) can serve goals (becoming a writer), goals (writer) can never serve labels (becoming a writer). The idea that you have to achieve something to become that thing may forever prevent you from achieving it.
Your personality should come from your goals. Not the other way around. To quote Paul Graham, âthe more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.â
Abandon all labels that are preventing you from becoming who you are. Lazy, dumb, scaredâŚabandon it now. Itâs only limiting you. You are nothing, and can become anything.
Hereâs why.
Researchers found a strong correlation between social roles and personality types.
If the social role demanded that one person exhibits one of the five personality traits (remember OCEAN for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), they would usually develop that trait.
It was the fact that they needed to develop that trait that made them harbor it, not the other way around.
Should we put these people that developed these traits into different social contexts, their personalities would change depending on their roles (see the Stanford prison experiment).
Careful though! It is not âsocietyâ that is deciding who you are.
What we mean here is that you become who you need to become according to the situation in which you are.
People that do not become who they want do not proactively seek goals to become who they want to be.
For example, a 2015 study by Drs. Nathan Hudson and Chris Fraley showed that personality can be intentionally changed through goal-setting and sustained personal effort.
Intentional change, however, is emotionally rigorousâit doesnât exactly feel good and can even be shockingly painful.
If youâre unwilling to put yourself through emotional experiences, shift your perspective, and make purposeful changes to your behavior and environment, then donât expect huge changes (at least in the short run).
Becoming psychologically flexible is key to personal transformation. It helps with not over-attaching yourself to your current identity or perspectives.
Becoming insatiably committed to a future purpose and embracing emotions rather than avoiding them is how radical change occurs.
Who are you?
In what ways have you defined yourself or others by what was done in the past?
Have you limited and overly defined yourself by categorizing or typifying yourself?
What would happen if you stopped boxing yourself into a category and opened yourself to the possibility of change?
Myth #2: Personality Is Innate and Fixed
In a study made over sixty years, researchers tested the personality of the same group of people (on the OCEAN scale).
When they discovered the results, they were shocked.
People kept on rating differently year after year.
-> people are highly adaptive.
Even after going through extreme change, we quickly adapt to that change and it becomes our new norm (see the Hedonic Treadmill theory).
Hence, we may feel like the same person as we age and gradually change, but we arenât actually the same at all.
Life feels ânormalâ as it keeps on going, while in fact, it may be completely different from the past.
Quick question: How much time do you spend imagining your future self?
For most people, the answer is ânot muchâ. What we have learned so far described two major obstacles that prevent people from creating their future personalities.
We assume our present personality is a finished product.
We overemphasize the importance of the past, which leads us to become increasingly narrow in how we view ourselves and the world.
Since you know your personality changes regardless, itâs time you decide who you want to be so you can achieve your goals.
Itâs time you take your own personality into your own hands.
This is the power of choices. It is time to choose what your future self wants, not your present self.
Who you want to be in the future is more important than who you are now â and it should inform who you are now.
Itâs like a walk. If you intend to walk from Paris to Moscow, what would be your focus?
Moscow, obviously.
You should consider the present from a future vantage point.
Life starts taking on a whole new meaning when you begin thinking right now about what your future self will want.
Rather than making decisions based on your current identity, you should make decisions based on your future identity.
Itâs your responsibility to set your future self up for as much opportunity, success, and joy as possible.
This is how you become the person and create the life you want, rather than becoming someone with regret.
Who is your future self?
How often do you imagine and consciously design your future identity?
What would happen if you based your identity on who you want to be, rather than who youâve been?
Myth #3: Personality Comes from Your Past
âCausal determinismâ is the idea that whatever happens now is directly caused by a past event or condition.
From this view, people are determinedânot influencedâby prior events, like one domino in a toppling chain.
Where does this idea come from?
In looking at human behavior, psychologists have come to agree that the best way to predict future behavior is by looking at past behavior.
And in fact, that phenomenon is validated over and over again. It seems people are quite predictable over time.
But why?
4 reasons.
They continue to be defined by past traumas that havenât been reframed or dealt with.
They have an identity narrative based on their past, not the future.
Their subconscious keeps them consistent with their former self and emotions.
They have an environment supporting their present rather than future identity (âfriendsâ and family members shaming you for attempting something different).
These are the four levers that drive personality.
And guess what? You can control them.
When you change, reframe, or manage these levers, your personality and life will change.
Hereâs a story explaining why your past does not determine your present.
Tucker Max was a party boy and author who sold millions of books about his adventures. Then he made a movie.
Predictably, the movie bombed. That crushed Tuckerâs ego. He went to therapy for three years, then released a statement saying he no longer identified with the person in the books.
As such, when he reads himself, he only feels empathy for that guy that wrote the words. He is not embarrassed one bit, or ashamed by who he was because who he was is another person than who he is now.
When you begin to actively and intentionally move forward in your life, not only does your future get better but your past does as well.
Your past increasingly becomes something happening for you, not to you.
If your view of your own past hasnât changed much over recent months or years, then you havenât learned enough.
An unchanging past is a sign of emotional detachment and rigidityâan avoidance of facing the truth and moving forward in your life.
The more mature you become as a person, the more differently youâll view your past experiences.
But how can the past change?
Imagine getting a 10% raise.
Nice! You decide to celebrate and eat lunch with your colleague Mary.
Mary is excited! She also got a raise ofâŚ15%.
Suddenly, that 10% you were happy about does not seem so good in retrospect!!!
This outlines how instead of the past shaping the present, the present shapes the past.
The present is so complex that even that, we are not sure of. The way you remember your past is only one way, and certainly not the objective version of the events that happened.
When you allow yourself to fully relive your past and process the emotions that were then unprocessed, you change it, you let it go, free yourself, and can then move forward.
Context Is Everything
Our past is subjective because we give it meaning.
If we donât challenge it, the interpretation and emotional attachment impact us.
Trauma happens to all of us, both in large and small degrees.
When our trauma is unresolved, we stop moving forward in our lives.
We become emotionally rigid and shut off, and thus stop learning, evolving, and changing.
By continually avoiding our past traumas and the emotions they create, our life becomes an unhealthy and repetitive pattern.
We get stuck.
But as we open up and reframe the trauma, we can take a positive and mature view of the past.
The present and future then stop reflecting the past. We are free from the trauma.
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.
When you keep on blaming someone or something from the past, that makes you a victim, and that reflects more on you now than whoever or whatever it is youâre blaming.
âChanging your pastâ doesnât mean you discount the emotional charge of these experiences!
It means you change its interpretation.
As Marcel Proust said, âThe real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.â
In order to change your past, you need to become more psychologically flexible.
Psychological flexibility is the skill of being fluid and adaptive, holding your emotions loosely, and moving toward your goals.
The more flexible you become, the less youâll be overwhelmed or stopped by emotions. Instead, youâll embrace and learn from them.
The less emotionally developed and flexible a person is, the more they will avoid hard experiences; the more theyâll be limited and defined by painful experiences from their past.
This is counterintuitive, as many people come to believe the best way to deal with hard experiences is by burying their emotions and fighting a silent battle, alone.
This is not the way. Consider this quote from Emile Zola.
âIf you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.â
Emotions should not be buried. They are the doorway to growth and learning.
The reason peopleâs personalities plateau and get stuck in repetitive cycles is because they are avoiding the difficult and challenging emotions involved in learning and in connecting with themselves and others.
As a result, they remain weighted down by their limited perceptions of their past for far longer than necessary.
What stories are you telling about your past self?
Who was your former self?
In what ways are you different from your former self?
How has your past changed due to more recent experiences?
How would your life be different if your past was something happening for you rather than to you?
How could life change if you embraced the truth that your former and current selves are two fundamentally different people?
How would your life be if you never again blamed or limited yourself and your future based on the past?
Myth #4: Personality Must Be Discovered
Personality is built, not discovered.
Passion about something is developed, not uncovered.
As Dr. Jerome Bruner, a Harvard psychologist said âyou are more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.â
Good feelings are a consequence, not a cause. When you receive a salary from your job, you get paid after working for a month, not before. The salary is a payout the same way passion and motivation are a payout.
As such, the author describes wanting passion before putting in the work as, and I quote, âget-rich-quick thinking and completely lazy.â
Passion is the prize, but you have to invest first. Personality is no different. It is not something you discover but rather something you create through your actions and behaviors.
Personality is a by-product of your decisions in life. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or Lincoln did not do what they did because of who they were. They became who they became because of what they did.
Purpose Trumps Personality
Without a deep sense of purpose, your personality will be based on avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure, which is an animalistic mode of operating.
When youâre driven by purpose, youâll be highly flexible and youâll 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 isnât something you discover, but something you ultimately choose for yourself.
Stop looking for it and make the choice, then let the choice transform you.
As you proactively 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 the other way around.
Donât Try To Find Out How You Are â Choose It!
Trying to discover your personality leads to inaction, avoidance of hard conversations, distracting yourself through consumption, and making excuses for how youâre currently living.
It puts you in the passenger seat of your own life.
Instead, you should be the driver.
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 theyâve been taught to believe that work is all about and for them.
However, the most successful people in the world know that work is about helping and creating value for other people.
As Newport states, âIf you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (âwhat can the world offer me?â) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (âwhat can I offer the world?â).â
The author takes the same approach to marriage and relationships.
While there needs to be a connection at the beginning, a successful marriage is not something life owes you â it is something you build!
Marry for aligned purpose, not personality, because personality will change over time. Purpose, however, will transform you and your partner over time.
What purpose are you creating for yourself?
What would happen if you stopped trying to find yourself, and instead became more creative and collaborative?
How would your personality develop and change if you went to work on it, chiseling and shaping it in desired ways?
Who would you be if you could creatively design yourself? (Hint, hint: You can.)
Myth #5: Personality Is Your True and âAuthenticâ Self
Another problem with the âfixed viewâ of personality is that people feel entitled to do only the things that feel natural or easy to them. The things âthey were born forâ.
If something is hard, difficult, or awkward, then people say, âI shouldnât have to do this.â
People believe they have an âauthentic selfâ which is who they should remain true to.
This self is seen as innate, the ârealâ them.
Unfortunately, this reveals a fixed mindset, and is often a reaction to a trauma or a lack of healthy connection to parents.
âAuthenticityâ these days is simply another way of saying âI am lazyâ or âI am like that and wonât change.â
That prevents people from improving and getting out of their comfort zone.
Who do you really want to become?
What would happen if you stopped trying to be âauthentic,â and instead faced the truth of why youâre limiting yourself?
What would happen if you had hard conversations with the important people in your life?
What would happen if you were âtrueâ to your future self, not your current fears?
Your personality is not fixed or inherent. It is malleable and flexible, and it is something you can shape yourself.
When you understand the four levers that move it, you become the driver of your identity. You can transform yourself and achieve your goals. You can become flexible.
Your past and your future can increasingly become a story that you shape and define.
