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Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

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Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#71

Post by kareemm »

rdouble wrote: post #42
tokenadult wrote: post #6

Have you ever lived in a different country? I mean really lived there, not just visited? Radically changing your environment can do very well in radically changing your conception of yourself. Does the large multinational corporation you work for ever give people in your department a chance to relocate? That might be a great growth opportunity for you.

I'm not convinced living abroad always engenders positive change. I lived in Japan for a year and I don't remember another time in my life when I behaved in a more unhealthy manner.

living in another country gives you the opportunity to reinvent yourself and exposes you to different ideas. it's up to you whether you embrace those opportunities or not.

nothing engenders positive change. it only happens if you choose to make it happen for yourself.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#72

Post by thismat »

electromagnetic wrote: post #41
gaius wrote: post #4

It takes 30 days to form a new habit. You just have to get there. Routine is the key. And early mornings are the best, because you never have the excuse to say "I've had a shitty day at work, all I want is a pizza and a beer". For me it was the gym. Every morning (almost!) I roll in there at 6am before I'm even really awake. "Alright, lads" I say, "alright", they reply, it's always the same crowd, they are very serio…

Agreed. One addition, you can tie habits to objects either consciously or unconsciously. You probably didn't feel like that guy who'll train at 6am every day when you got up in a pair of boxers, but when you got into your gym stuff I bet that changed entirely. I bet there's a ton of joggers who don't feel like going out when it's -5C and there's the first sign of snow on the pavement, but they put on their tracksuit…

How right you are. I'm rarely ever "comfortable" in standard work clothes, but when I get home and throw on jeans and a t-shirt, the creative juices flow and I feel charged and ready to get stuff done, likewise when I open my blinds, I know it's time to clean the house.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#74

Post by thismat »

ajb wrote: post #62
ellyagg wrote: post #25

You can change this trait! I promise you, you're not stuck with it. I'm about your age and I was a huge procrastinator and underachiever until only 2-3 years ago. Since then, mostly through "grit", I was able to acquire a job as a senior software engineer, despite having no degree, and not even owning a computer until I was 23. I suspect you are like me in that you are much more interested in novelty and idea generat…

One activity where 'one thing at a time' doesn't work: research/invention. Edison was the classic multi-project guy: many research projects, most of them at any one time stuck waiting for him to find some way to progress them. Serious researchers are forced to work like that. Some of them manage to apply it to the rest of their lives too. Don't ask me how, though :-(

You can learn to manage multiple projects after you master managing them one at a time. This doesn't mean you should be working on multiple projects at the same time though, multi tasking seems to be pretty solidly proven as less effective than serious focus.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#75

Post by adamcrowe »

arohner wrote: post #9
gaius wrote: post #4

It takes 30 days to form a new habit. You just have to get there. Routine is the key. And early mornings are the best, because you never have the excuse to say "I've had a shitty day at work, all I want is a pizza and a beer". For me it was the gym. Every morning (almost!) I roll in there at 6am before I'm even really awake. "Alright, lads" I say, "alright", they reply, it's always the same crowd, they are very serio…

Yes. This advice is similar to Jerry Seinfeld's, which I also find to be excellent. http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...

This tip is awesome.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#76

Post by gaius »

thismat wrote: post #72
electromagnetic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. One addition, you can tie habits to objects either consciously or unconsciously. You probably didn't feel like that guy who'll train at 6am every day when you got up in a pair of boxers, but when you got into your gym stuff I bet that changed entirely. I bet there's a ton of joggers who don't feel like going out when it's -5C and there's the first sign of snow on the pavement, but they put on their tracksuit…

How right you are. I'm rarely ever "comfortable" in standard work clothes, but when I get home and throw on jeans and a t-shirt, the creative juices flow and I feel charged and ready to get stuff done, likewise when I open my blinds, I know it's time to clean the house.

That's one of the things I miss about working in the City, changing out of workclothes at the end of the day, it really did have a psychological effect.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#77

Post by frevd »

ruby_roo wrote: post #24

Is your personality type 'INTP', perchance? INTPs have these constant internal battles. We're good at concentrating and love working in the realm of ideas. However, we're often an impractical lot and procrastination is pretty rampant among the other INTPs I know. The biggest problem, I think, is that we just really suck at perceiving the passage of time, and the daydreaming, writing, or discussion of ideas is often r…

Ay, you're perfectly right, I can identify myself with that too. Also, if I cannot find myself in what I have to do today, I simply won't do it, no matter what I believe or tell others about what I'm going to do, thats a hard learned experience and there seems to be nothing I can do against not not doing stuff that bores me.

If you're an architect you need to do these kinds of things, you will just not be happy doing something else, no matter what's best for someone else or what others tell you is best for you.

What helped me was to set me goals to achieve one thing after the other as well as an exit time. At that time I'm looking forward to simply do something else (as an example - while currently being employed and having all the luxury I could imagine (big pay, nice collegues, nice boss), I still need the perspective that I'm out of all that after 2 years of full work - otherwise I'd suffer from boredom).

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#78

Post by helentoomik »

For any kind of self-modification project, I strongly recommend the book "Self-directed behavior" by Watson & Tharp. It's the thinking man's (or woman's) self-help book, with general all-purpose advice for any kind of change. Very practical and very useful.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#79

Post by gaius »

ganley wrote: post #69
gaius wrote: post #4

It takes 30 days to form a new habit. You just have to get there. Routine is the key. And early mornings are the best, because you never have the excuse to say "I've had a shitty day at work, all I want is a pizza and a beer". For me it was the gym. Every morning (almost!) I roll in there at 6am before I'm even really awake. "Alright, lads" I say, "alright", they reply, it's always the same crowd, they are very serio…

You absolutely can change this, but 30 days is optimistic. I was like this too, and it took YEARS to really break - not break to the point where I was successfully forcing myself to do these things, but break to the point where it was part of who I was. That said, you want to structure things so that in 30 days (or less) you can get some tangible feedback that the changes are working. The best concrete piece of advic…

As my old drill sergeant used to say, nothing gets it done like doing it.

Re: Have you ever been successful in changing your personality?

#80

Post by poltergeist »

Like someone mentioned, 28 days is what it takes to form a habit, through the formation of neural links in the brain.

However, to last 28 days, you will need something else to inspire you. Nothing works like love/sex, which are evolutionary needs embedded into our limbic memory. You have to somehow derive inspiration from either of these two to last 28 days.

I know because I have, on 2 occasions - and have achieved minor miracles :D . On others, I continue being the same as you. But its comforting ( and scary since I don't want to be 30 and still a lazy ass ) to know that there's more than one of us.

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