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You Can Change Your Personality

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Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#61

Post by Baeocystin »

aoeu345 wrote: post #50
xkxx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings I became much happier after I chose to be alone. I realized that I'm not meant to have any close friends. I realized that I'm not a likable person. And I realized that it's totally okay. Even if I change to become a "better" (more likable, able to have more friends) person, I won't like myself. I like myself the way I am. Now, if…

It's easy to say that you're happier alone. It's much more difficult to admit to yourself that you have social anxiety that keeps you from making relationships. A human that does the first will decay over time. A human that does the second can be anything he/she wants to be. There is enormous supporting evidence that quantity and quality of relationships are directly correlated to happiness

Do you realize how infuriating your attitude is to people who prefer solitude?

I like people. I have no trouble speaking in public, making new friends, or just engaging in small talk. I enjoy it, so it comes easily.

I simply enjoy being alone more, so I often am, and there is nothing wrong with me for choosing so. Nor is there with any of the other mostly-hermits I know.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#62

Post by bkanber »

I believe that we have control over our personality.

Like exercise (to change your body), changing your personality takes time and conscious effort. You need to dedicate time every day for honest self-reflection, self-awareness, meditation, reading and education in the topic, etc.

There are two ways you can lose weight. Accidentally, by getting sick or stressed, for instance; and on purpose, through concerted diet and exercise. The same can happen with personality changes. It can happen accidentally, through change of environment or mental illness like depression.

But doing it on purpose seems more wholesome. Losing weight on purpose is better than losing it accidentally, even though the result is the same, because those people are healthy and the others aren't. Put another way: you shouldn't have to get sick to lose weight.

Everybody should spend some time daily on those mental health items above. It's exercise. Through it you can point your personality and mind in the direction you'd like it to go, and with hard work and patience you'll get there. As your mind gets healthier the less likely you are to become mentally ill. You'll avoid common issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety and eating disorders.

I think mental illness is starting to become a public health crisis. I know so few people that aren't constantly stressed due to work or school, I've seen many people fall into legitimate depression and only recover after changing their environment (ie quitting their job).

It's said that half of adults experience depression at least once in their life. I bet it's more like 90%. It's like the flu. Pervasive, transmissible and contagious, with most victims recovering quickly, but a small percentage experiencing fatal cases. Now we have flu shots at every Walgreens.

It's time to do the same for mental health.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#63

Post by apinstein »

tw04 wrote: post #52
mseebach wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but irrelevant. "He had a hard time in school, so we should tolerate him being an asshole" won't really fly. Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.

I think you're missing the point. "Being racist" is pretty easy to nip in the bud. Telling someone not to be mean to someone else just because they're insert non-white race is easy. Telling someone "when you say X, that doesn't even occur to you might be offensive, it upsets other people". Now repeat that for a thousand different social interactions, and tell me how easy it is. "Don't be an asshole" is what? "Being a…

Great analysis! Have you heard of the Birkman personality assessment? One of the components it measures is exactly what you describe (they call it Esteem).

It doesn't make you an asshole (intent) not to know that, but it does make your interactions less effective to not work "with the grain" of that dynamic.

At our company everyone takes the Birkman and we train everyone on how to leverage the knowledge it provides on your personality style and how that intersects with others' style. Whenever you're having trouble in an interpersonal interaction with someone, you can think about / looks at the profile and tweak your approach to improve things. It had been incredibly effective for making it easier, more effective, and more pleasant to work with others.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#64

Post by xkxx »

aoeu345 wrote: post #50
xkxx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings I became much happier after I chose to be alone. I realized that I'm not meant to have any close friends. I realized that I'm not a likable person. And I realized that it's totally okay. Even if I change to become a "better" (more likable, able to have more friends) person, I won't like myself. I like myself the way I am. Now, if…

It's easy to say that you're happier alone. It's much more difficult to admit to yourself that you have social anxiety that keeps you from making relationships. A human that does the first will decay over time. A human that does the second can be anything he/she wants to be. There is enormous supporting evidence that quantity and quality of relationships are directly correlated to happiness

> It's easy to say that you're happier alone.

Yeah, it's easy to say almost anything.

> It's much more difficult to admit to yourself that you have social anxiety that keeps you from making relationships.

Nah, not that difficult, just as easy as to say or admit almost anything. The only problem is that I don't have social anxiety. E.g., one may claim that it must be very hard for me to admit that I enjoy masturbating to copro-necro-midget pornography. I'd disagree, because it's very easy for me to admit that, especially when I'm effectually anonymous. The only problem is that I don't enjoy masturbating to copro-necro-midget pornography, so I see no sense in admitting it, just like I see no sense in admitting that I have social anxiety.

> A human that does the first will decay over time. A human that does the second can be anything he/she wants to be.

What about a human that does the third, the fourth, etc.? Your logic seems pretty binary to me.

> There is enormous supporting evidence that quantity and quality of relationships are directly correlated to happiness

Yeah, it may be true. I could have been happier if I were not me, but somebody else who is more of a social whore. The only problem is, I am me and not somebody who can become more of a social whore. Trying to become more of a social whore was what kept me unhappy. After I decided to stop trying and accepted myself as unlikable, confrontational and angry person, I became more happy.

Also, it's okay for you to think that I have issues, deceive myself, should change, etc. I disagree and don't care enough to try to convince you that you are wrong, because your opinion is pretty much irrelevant to me.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#65

Post by nagvx »

tw04 wrote: post #52
mseebach wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but irrelevant. "He had a hard time in school, so we should tolerate him being an asshole" won't really fly. Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.

I think you're missing the point. "Being racist" is pretty easy to nip in the bud. Telling someone not to be mean to someone else just because they're insert non-white race is easy. Telling someone "when you say X, that doesn't even occur to you might be offensive, it upsets other people". Now repeat that for a thousand different social interactions, and tell me how easy it is. "Don't be an asshole" is what? "Being a…

I generally agree with your idea that "don't be an asshole" is an incredibly subjective and unhelpful rule of thumb. However your comment that "being racist is pretty easy to nip in the bud" is just absurdly oversimplified.

A racist may live in fear of the criminality of (insert race here) without seeing the bigger picture of poverty that causes it. A racist may have a majority of bad experiences with (insert race here) without realising their own prejudice was to blame.

Racism isn't "being mean", racism is potentially diverse set of prejudices and overly broad opinions that are founded on faulty logic or incomplete data. Racism can be propped up by an entire web of social beliefs and a lifetime of personal experience. Racists don't think they're "being mean", they think they hold sane, justifiable opinions against other "mean" or even "inferior" groups of people. Indeed, it may "not even occur to them they are being offensive".

The long and sordid history of racism around the globe can attest to the fact that racism is not something "easy to nip in the bud".

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#66

Post by underwater »

mememachine wrote: post #54
underwater wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a really counter productive meme. My theory is that engineers are so comfortable using logic to solve problems, and viewing solutions as right or wrong that they fail to adapt when there are shades of grey. Get a bunch engineers in a room and they'll argue forever about a solution because they don't understand their own biases or how emotion is clouding people's judgement. Bringing a bit of empathy can resolve…

>It is a really counter productive meme. My theory is that engineers are so comfortable using logic to solve problems, and viewing solutions as right or wrong that they fail to adapt when there are shades of grey. Youre going wrong trying to paint engineers with a brush this broad.

In my experience engineers will discuss if a solution is correct or incorrect, as though there is one global truth. But I rarely see discussions that acknowledge people have biases and that leads to differing opinions on correctness.

I follow some developer advocates on Twitter who get very angry at engineers who don't prioritise web performance above everything else (UX, accessibility, features, actually shipping code). Given their experience battling bad performance all day every day this is understandable. But from the perspective of someone who is trying to juggle a million priorities this comes across as crazy.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#67

Post by Broken_Hippo »

bjterry wrote: post #53
albertTJames wrote: post #33

This is a stale and old debate, personality is extremely flexible and heavily depends on environmental and social constraints, as were demonstrated by seminal social experiment studies such as those of Milgram or Zimbardo. The argument that the changes seen there are short lived can be contradicted by the fact that subjects always go back to their normal environment after the experiment. What I believe Ed Boyden woul…

This reminds me of an article I read which said that 95% of the soldiers in Vietnam who had become addicted to heroin simply stopped when they came back to America. 1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...

I have read about this a few times. I think the main difference is in what the folks are changing: They are changing habits and lifestyle - their input - rather than changing their base personality - their output. Naturally with different input they act differently: Same for dropping a drug that affects the way you act.

And I do somewhat understand - I changed a lot of things when I moved overseas. I likely seem different: But I'm also happier and have a different knowledge base than I did a few years ago. People's expectations of me changed as well: As soon as people realize I'm not Norwegian (the English accent gives me away), it is OK if I break some social norms - those things that I had trouble grasping anyway.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#68

Post by bambax »

nxc18 wrote: post #5

People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…

Absolutely.

In a great text written in 1880, Émile Littré, author of a great French dictionary that took him over 15 years to write, says this:

> je suis corrigible, ayant de bonne heure compris qu’il était peu sage de répondre aux suggestions d’amendement «Je suis comme cela» [1]

> I can change, having grasped early that it's not very clever to answer "that's just how I am" to people giving you life advice [my translation]

[1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AEmile_Littre_-_Etudes_...

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#69

Post by 77pt77 »

awfgylbcxhrey wrote: post #55
77pt77 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they always talked about team this and team that, but efforts to actually incorporate the team were obviously seen as weak, and the "arrogant know it all" persona was rewarded. These are usually techniques to weed out people that the people defending those strategies think (consciously or not) are unfit. If you follow the advice you really are unfit and they will exclude you. This is common across the board in soci…

These are usually techniques to weed out people that the people defending those strategies think (consciously or not) are unfit. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

They say one thing, expect that people follow it, but then only promote those that explicitly do not follow it, because in reality they want to promote people that do not follow that rhetoric but saying that outright invalidates the test.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#70

Post by umberway »

nxc18 wrote: post #5

People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality. There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or workin…

My thought is that 'nerds' collaborate better despite poorer than average understanding of fellow humans. It's because their work and its success or failure are more objectively defined which makes organising and delegation of tasks relatively straightforward. So we can have thousands of scientists and engineers building the Large Super Hadron Collider while a Liberal Arts Department may be beset by bickering and feuds.
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