Can I Choose The Person I Want to Be?
An essay inspired by the book Personality Isn’t Permanent by Dr Benjamin Hardy.
The whole journey of self-development would mean absolutely nothing if we didn’t accept the fact that our annoying personality traits and habits can actually be changed. Funny thing is that if you run a quick Google search you can find that even the world of science and smart psychologists themselves disagree whether our personality is even possible to be changed. But quite frankly, if I’m hoping to become less of a disorganized procrastinator (or whatever our million problems might be), I decided that for me it’s essential to believe that at least certain aspects of my personality can in fact be changed by continuous hard effort.
Stop Finding Yourself
So Dr Benjamin Hardy’s book with the title “Personality isn’t permanent” resonated with me right away. Yass, here comes a book that can justify my belief that I can change myself, hurray! Accepting that whatever you are right now is and will be “you”, is like accepting that it’s out of your control to change and you (and people around you) just need to accept whatever personality you have been dealt, forever. He says “It’s like: You can’t change the past. You can only discover and better understand who you really are and why. This is why people seek to discover or “find” themselves. They are looking for who “they” are.“
I really haven’t bothered with personal development for a long while because in my twenties I was just busy doing all the things I wanted to do, like travelling the world, finishing 3 totally different degrees, living in countries and doing weird things like hitchhiking around South America alone or spending loads of money volunteering at some big sports events. Life seemed pretty easy and straightforward, to be happy, just do whatever you want and voilá. I would meet these people talking about finding themselves or the meaning of life during some bonfire sessions and I would try my best not to show how much I didn’t care about any of that. I was there because I knew I wanted to be there and made it happen and all I wanted is to stare into the damn fire and sing Riptide by Vance Joy another time and enjoy the moment.
The hardship of life for me started when I slowly realized that singing Riptide with some handsome stranger again is in fact making me rather empty and sad than happy and that now hiking those mountains in Patagonia would only make sense to me if I could show it to someone special who actually cared about me. I realized I was done being broke, I was done meeting new people all the time, and I started to want things like a solid business, a home and a family, some of which for the first time I felt wasn’t entirely on me. I realized the only thing that is in my control and that I could really work on to one day get to the desired future is myself, who I am. So I looked into the mirror and asked myself if this was it? Is this me?
One Decision Is All It Takes
Hardy says in this book that “you can decide who you’re committed to being and becoming” and that it’s “not innate but trained. It can and does change. It can and should be chosen and designed.” And at that moment in front of that mirror, this is exactly what happened in my unconscious mind. My brain had a click and took a quick look inside and outside of myself and realized that nope, this is not at all it, not even close and decided that there was a way better version of me. And I am that person, even if it doesn’t yet show.
Hardy suggests that all you need to do is to bring your focus from the past to the future and decide who you want to be, commit to it and take one step at a time. Basically, start living your life as the future self you wanna become and make decisions based on this desired self. Hardy believes that the only secret of people who can transform their lives is that “they refuse to be defined by the past. They see something different and more meaningful and they never stop fuelling that vision. Every single day, they maintain their vision of faith and hope and take courageous steps in that direction, accompanied by much failure and pain.”
He also states that we “are not a single and narrow “type” of person. In different situations and around different people, we are different.“ I am indeed different with different people, even in different countries or in different languages and I should accept that. I guess it helps to just stop hanging out with people who make us feel bad about ourselves or with whom we don’t feel comfortable being ourselves, and who don’t inspire us to be the better version of ourselves and don’t support becoming this future self.
”Who you want to be in the future is more important than who you are now, and should actually inform who you are now. Your intended future self should direct your current identity and personality far more than your former self does.“
At the end of the day, we are just making decisions. ”Personality — like passion, inspiration, motivation, and confidence — is a by-product of your decisions in life. 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.“ Not that it’s not super hard to decide some important things but I never really had a problem with change, like changing my mind, altering my decisions, and making new ones, so this is the part I am a bit less scared of. It took me more time to realize that I needed to make a decision about SO MANY things.
Do You Just “Want” Or “Are You Committed”?
Being honest at every moment and planning and deciding a future direction is what makes a difference. ”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 to have hard conversations. Whether you realize it or not, everything you do has a purpose or a goal, and these goals are what shape your identity. Every behaviour has a reason. Realizing why you’re engaging in a specific behaviour is fundamental to becoming a conscious human being. Seeing every action you take as goal-driven allows you to take stock in the quality of your decision-making.“
I feel that doing what I wanted in the moments for the most part of my life wasn’t a bad thing and I am totally happy with the life I have so far.
It’s still indeed important to know the things we want but how the book says:
”Your desires shouldn’t be mistaken as the “real” you. They are simply things you’ve attached meaning to, which you can also detach from or change the meaning of. You can get yourself to want anything. You might as well be intentional about what you train yourself to want. If your future self is successful, you must learn to want what it takes to become successful. Desire is the second source of goals. Your desires can and must be trained. Your life will become far more successful when you choose desires that produce outcomes your future self wants.“
In a way, the hardest part for me is to “unwant” some things that I actually loved doing for so long but I just feel I maxed out the path they lead to. Giving up and letting go of things in my everyday life that I truly enjoy for the future I want for myself. The only way I can do it is believing 100% that I will be able to do them again with a serious upgrade once I reach my goals.
So when you decide who the person is you want to become, Hardy suggests that you also need to set a measurable goal to make sure you stay on track. “Many people recommend focusing entirely on the “process,” and essentially ignoring the result. Yet it’s impossible to determine a “process,” let alone an effective one, without a goal in mind. Moreover, without regularly measuring your progress and results along the way, it’s impossible to determine if your process is working. Your process must be based on the desired result you seek. You must begin with the end in mind.”
And the last step, the most important one, is to commit. Not by words, but really, from the bottom of your heart. And in our world where having commitment issues is worn as a badge of honour by so many, this might be the step that will determine if we truly succeed to bring out true potential or will be the ones 10 years from now explaining at a dinner party all the reasons why we couldn’t make it.
“You can know what you’re committed to by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. When you truly commit to the results you want, then your life starts improving. Your future self and the one major goal is what you should be committed to. If you’re committed to becoming your desired future self, you need to avoid the pitfalls that come from low willpower at night. Success at night and in the morning is crucial to becoming your future self. By engaging in intentional, goal-directed behaviour in the morning, you’ll begin having peak experiences on a daily basis.”
And that’s where having routines and processes set up for success will eventually lead us to exactly where we want to be, if we dare to stick to them for long enough.
There is only one question left: Are we willing to commit to our future self?
I surely am. What about you?
