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You Can Change Your Personality

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Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#81

Post by dwaltrip »

Baeocystin wrote: post #61
aoeu345 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your description of your solitude is quite different than the one by xkxx, so your comment seems a bit off the mark.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#82

Post by johnchristopher »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #67
bjterry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diff…

We are, if anything, creatures of habit. Drawn to the safety and the comfort of the similar.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#83

Post by tw04 »

nagvx wrote: post #65
tw04 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

Stopping someone from fearing someone of a different race isn't easy. Stopping blatant racism in the workplace is. I think it's a bit of a stretch for you to assume I was talking about "eradicating racism from planet earth" when the context of the discussion was interacting with coworkers. CLEARLY when I said "nipping it in the bud is easy" I wasn't referring to the end of racism across the planet. That will LITERALLY be impossible until the point we have a unified culture globally: which I won't say will NEVER happen, but we're generations away if it ever does.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#84

Post by Swannie »

pmoriarty wrote: post #59
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

As a counterpoint to this, see the many excellent articles on The Hermitary .[1] Also see Anthony Storr's Solitude: A Return to the Self .[2] Many people have historically chosen solitude for religious or spiritual reasons, to focus on something they wanted to achieve, because they just preferred being alone, or for many other reasons. Many societies have stigmatized solitude and those who choose it, but on the other…

I'd suggest the key difference is that one is a conscious decision, often taken with prior thought, and often some proactive mental preparation - that could be as simple as reading scripture.

The other is typically unconscious, often exacerbated by anti-social behaviour.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#85

Post by randcraw »

vivekd wrote: post #13

Did I just miss something or did the article offer no evidence for it's position that personality can changer other than presenting some writing exercises by high schoolers that asked them if personality can change. It didn't seem to elaborate about how these exercises affected or changed their personality or present any other evidence or examples of changing personality. Don't get me wrong, I do believe that persona…

I think that's because the authors are pro psychologists, all of whom long ago accepted as dogma that clinical psychology CAN make a difference in thinking/behavior, especially in reducing neuroses. While this change for the better usually isn't described as "changing your personality", to most non-pro-psychologists, it could be.

I suspect it's just a matter of how much change, and how the change manifests. If one of the classic attributes of personality is sustainably reset to a different level, like trust or sharing or kindness, I'd certainly consider that personality to be changed. I haven't read the article, but that may be what it proposes.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#86

Post by nagvx »

tw04 wrote: post #83
nagvx wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 he…

Stopping someone from fearing someone of a different race isn't easy. Stopping blatant racism in the workplace is. I think it's a bit of a stretch for you to assume I was talking about "eradicating racism from planet earth" when the context of the discussion was interacting with coworkers. CLEARLY when I said "nipping it in the bud is easy" I wasn't referring to the end of racism across the planet. That will LITERALL…

I wasn't assuming you were talking about "eradicating racism from planet earth" - that's a bit of a strawman. "Stopping blatant racism" is moving the goalposts, because "blatant" wasn't part of the original context.

As you say, you can stop someone overtly declaring their racism, but that doesn't mean they won't still covertly (or even unconsciously) continue with racist behaviors. Which is why it isn't so "clear", because even a simple situation with coworkers, you can be facing an uphill battle.

Anyway, I would wager we both broadly agree and this is now just a semantic argument.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#87

Post by Nomentatus »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #67
bjterry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diff…

I was thinking just this, too; and then fipped my opinion a few seconds ago. What I was thinking at first was "I just changed my tactics, that's all." But of course, that's what others see as our personality; our tactics. Not just our typical tactics, that is; but also what we revert to when pressed. I think I changed both, so I'm not who I was. I seem the same to me, of course... but so what. I still feeling twenty inside sometimes, or younger but that doesn't mean I am - I certainly ain't.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#88

Post by Nomentatus »

johnchristopher wrote: post #82
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 diff…

We are, if anything, creatures of habit. Drawn to the safety and the comfort of the similar.

Meditation is one good way to break this. Rubbing your nose endlessly in your own thoughtless patterns can be bloody embarrassing. Certainly life-changing.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#89

Post by Nomentatus »

jusq2 wrote: post #74
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

Please note the second word of this summary is "often". If you want to know why its "often" and not "always" visit your nearest library and take a look at the size of books on the subject. And here lies the problem with the internet today and the comment boards such as these. People will actually walk away reading these kind of 2 minute summaries thinking they know something about the subject at hand. And on top of t…

Which is greatly eased by dropping citations or a link, refining or contradicting what others have said - if you would care to do so. Education happens one page and one book at a time, and one can and should start anywhere. That at least some others don't understand as much as you do is inevitable; but don't disdain them for that, help them along.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#90

Post by Baeocystin »

dwaltrip wrote: post #81
Baeocystin wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your description of your solitude is quite different than the one by xkxx, so your comment seems a bit off the mark.

I think the advice given comes from a place of wanting to help, but it's the same mistake I see natural extroverts make time and time again- that solitude is itself a sickness.

The fellow with low self-esteem may have other issues at well, but telling him that the desire for distance from others is innately wrong isn't going to help him become healthier.

I think a lot of people with social anxiety would feel better about themselves if they were, instead, told that it's OK not to be more social than you want to be. There are still behavior rules to be followed; this isn't license to be a jerk. But for many people, they honestly don't do best with too much contact with others, and that is OK.

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