How To Change Who You Are
Have you ever felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, lost in someone else’ bewildering world?
Hold on to your hat because here’s a revelation —
You’re not Alice.
You’re Lewis Carroll.
You’re the creator, actor, and performer of your own story.
Let’s take a moment to let that sink in.
Just as an actor can shed one role and adopt another, you also possess the power to reinvent yourself.
In 1968, Walter Mischel, a psychologist, and an author, mentioned in his book, Personality and Assessment:
“No one has a fixed personality. Everyone changes with time.
If they don’t, it’s because they don’t want to.
There’s nothing that we can’t change about ourselves, even our personality.”
The first change in life comes from this self-realization that “You can change.”
Yes, it’s intimidating.
I know it’s too much pressure to make every move right in life.
Your mind fights you. Your thoughts betray you. Society calls you weird.
When you want to be peaceful, the thoughts of the past and future disturb you. When you want to eat healthily, your friends demoralize you.
But that’s how you create your version 2.0.
Your role in the world is a kaleidoscope of thoughts, beliefs, past experiences, and lessons learned.
It’s like software running in the brain-computer, helping you navigate the world’s complexities.
But, this software was installed from five different sources:
What Forms Who You Are
#1. Parents/Guardians:
Parents are your first teachers. You learn by observing them.
Research says:
Parents play a pivotal role in influencing their child’s personality.
What and how parents speak and behave molds the kid’s character.
There are many reasons why kids inherit their parents’ traits.
Reason №1: The DNA
An online study published in The Guardian suggests:
The genes you inherit from your parents are one of the deciding factors of your personality type.
Genetic inheritance accounts for 50% of your psychological behaviors.
Reason №2: Time
A child lives with their parents 24/7. So, company matters a lot.
The child who is in the learning stage of his/her life quickly grasps/adopts personality traits. (due to lack of knowledge and understanding. )
The Society for Research in Child Development suggests that parental conflicts impair the child’s cognitive development, shaping their social behavior and conduct later.
Reason №3: Experience and Feelings
Kids learn through their experiences.
According to a study, our minds are programmed so that we don’t remember events or dates. We remember experiences, feelings, and emotions.
Let’s say the parents yell at their child’s mistakes instead of helping them. The child learns that “yelling is the way of teaching.”
So, they believe that pestering is the only way to get things done or correct others.
When they find success using the technique, the habit of yelling becomes powerful.
#2. Previous Birth:
You’ve seen a notorious/playful/articulate youngster, unlike the sober parents, right?
They’ve just taken birth, so where did they learn to behave that way?
The reincarnation theory says “past birth:”
When a soul leaves a body (dies), it carries with it the habits and predispositions from that birth to another.
[P.S: That’s why changing bad habits is inevitable unless you want to live your next life the same as this one.]
#3. Surroundings:
The environment plays a vital role in shaping our personality. The resources and the environment influences how the child develops his/her personality.
A countryside person is often found to be more quiet and reserved than one living in urban areas.
#4. Friends and Teachers:
The child is still in the formative years of developing their personality when schooling begins.
So, the child learns a lot of things from school through teachers and classmates.
My ten-year-old nephew used the “F” word for the first time.
We were all amazed as we had never used cuss words at home or in his presence.
When we sat him down to explain its derogatory meaning, he confessed that he learned it at school. On further discussion, he said that a few days ago, he overheard his teacher scolding someone over the phone using that “F” word.
Later he heard one of his classmates use it. So he thought it must have been a good word to use.
Had we not checked or corrected him, it would have become a part of his personality. But after learning that it’s an abusive word, he felt ashamed and apologized.
So, sometimes, children learn and adopt some beliefs from their contemporaries at school or neighborhood. It isn’t their fault.
However, they are becoming something unknowingly, which they only realize at a later date. They are just soaking what’s out there in the open.
#5 Willpower:
The strongest trait one can have and can overshadow the influence of all the above factors is willpower.
Most people think they lack willpower because they attribute it to tasks:
I don’t have the willpower to exercise every day.
I don’t have the willpower to be an entrepreneur.
I don’t have the willpower to eat healthy.
The truth is everyone has willpower.
But the major enemy of willpower is BLAME.
The more you blame, the more you ignore your strengths and capabilities.
Willpower means the power to be responsible for yourself. Only the degrees can vary.
It’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes.
The simplest way to increase willpower is by taking small steps. Micro steps. Doable tasks.
Just the way you can’t charge a battery from 0 to 100 in a flash, you can’t increase willpower in a day.
Commit only for a day.
Then another and another.
After seven days, you’ll feel, “If I can do it for seven days, I can do it for the next.”
Congratulations! You strengthened your willpower from one day to seven days.
Now, keep doing it.
The day you stop, you lose momentum. Self-doubt creeps in.
If you stop for one day, it becomes two. Then a week. And then a month. And then you say, “I can’t do it.”
It’s the same YOU who did it for a week/month/year.
Then what changed?
You just stopped taking small steps.
The same can be applied to any traits like giving up anger, complaining, social media, porn addictions, overthinking, etc.
What can we say:
If our choices lack foresight and wisdom, we may inadvertently become the architects of our own turmoil.
It’s a chilling prospect, yet one that’s increasingly conceivable.
This is the cycle that’s in action all the time:
Thoughts — Feelings — Attitudes — Beliefs — Actions — Repeated actions — Habits — Future(Destiny)
Hence, changing your fates hinge only on one thing:
Individual awakenings
The next steps include:
Making a conscious decision to change
Making wise decisions based on past experience and desired future
Life’s Dualistic Play: The Dance of Internal Efforts and External Results
Life resembles drama/movie brimming with two aspects:
The Rehearsal (Internal Efforts)
The Live Play (External Display)
A perfect drama/act/movie depends on rehearsal.
The better the practice, the more refined your act becomes.
But, today, we’re focused on external display rather than internal efforts.
Let’s say you want to improve your relationship with your partner.
Your intentions are true. You genuinely want to patch up. You don’t want to fight anymore.
So, what do you do?
Talk nicely
Behave nicely
Appreciate one another
Help one another
But you’re missing the point. All these are eternal displays.
What you think about them is your internal effort.
If I think, “My partner will never change — they’ll always be the way they are — annoying, unhelpful, mess-maker, etc.” and act the opposite (talk/behave nicely), I won’t get the desired result.
The reason?
Vibes.
Your thoughts have vibrations. And they reach the person whom they are meant for. It’s the law of the universe.
You can’t stop it.
Doing good and thinking bad doesn’t give you the result you want. It makes life superficial.
You feel, “I did everything to make my relationship work, but nothing worked.”
Whenever you feel that way, ask yourself, “What’s my internal effort? What do I think?”
Think good, and that goodness will reach them.
You won’t need to act superficially.
But that doesn’t mean you must force yourself to think nice about your partner’s bad habits.
Here’s what you can do: (The Internal Effort)
Convince your mind that your partner is not wrong.
In reality, no one’s wrong. Everyone acts according to their belief systems based on their past experiences (and the five influencing factors discussed above).
A person living in the eastern part of the world saying “it’s a day” might look wrong to the person living in the western part where it’s night.
Conflicts aren’t external. They’re always internal.
It’s a matter of perspective.
Just the way I have some bad habits, they also do. And no one wants to live with their bad habits. It’s their internal weaknesses that culminate into bad habits.
So, teach your mind what to think of a person you’ve conflicts with.
Two things will happen with this exercise:
Your mind will stop thinking badly about your partner. Result? No bad vibes will reach them.
When you correct them/interact with them, they won’t feel belittled or inferior.
The Real Personal Growth
Personal growth illuminates the contours of self-understanding.
I remember a conversation with my grandfather who said,
“With each step forward, look back to see where you’ve been.
You’ll begin to understand the rules of the game, and how you’ve been playing, or rather, being played.”
I grappled with this wisdom during my attempts to start various clubs at school. Each failure, from the science club to the drama club, offered a lesson that “I had self-doubts.”
It wasn’t until my ninth attempt that everything fell into place.
The moment was similar to a scene from the movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness”, where Will Smith’s character finally cracks the Rubik’s cube.
To transform yourself, you must learn what internal work you must do.
Ignoring the internal work during your journey may lead to a superficial life.
In an enlightening podcast episode I listened to recently, the host remarked,
“The world is a reflection of the collective consciousness. If we want to change the world, we must first change ourselves.”
This quote perfectly encapsulates my message.
So, remember, you’re the creator of your own destiny.
By destiny, I mean the future you want.
In the words of the legendary Bruce Lee,
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.
If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”
Remember the profound wisdom from “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho:
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
Let this wisdom guide you on your journey of self-discovery.
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Darshak Rana