5 ms·

I changed my personality in six weeks

200 points by andsoitis 10mo ago

reprom 10mo ago
Given that these are malleable I'd be interested in data on how the pandemic affected people's personality measurements. My bet is loads of people would have shot way up on the neuroticism scale.
- zero_shift 10mo ago
  The strange thing is, whilst I found the pandemic itself very difficult, I came out a much more confident, extraverted person. Actually quite the opposite from my pre COVID personality.
- wincy 10mo ago
  My wife became much more assertive and disagreeable after we had a special needs child in the NICU for nine months and the constant pressure from doctors to get unnecessary procedures like a tracheostomy. They also said we didn’t have to resuscitate her if we didn’t want to. Constant battles and pressure and my wife can be a stone cold bitch now when she needs to be, where she used to just say “okay”. Our daughter is seven now, she does use a wheelchair, but is normal intelligence and just went in her cute little electric car she got for Christmas with her big sister to a friend’s house down the street. I’m so proud of her, and my wife. So sometimes these traumatic events improve your personality in the sense that they give you a more realistic way of how the world actually works, and how to achieve your goals (especially when those goals are dearly held, like “I want my child to survive and have the best quality of life possible). Also, with COVID I’d imagine a lot of the neuroticism going up or down depended on where you were and your philosophy. For me, and a lot of people leaning conservative, living in the Midwest, I think it is less neurotic, perhaps to our detriment. Totally disregarding health warnings, and being insubordinately against precautions rather than becoming more neurotic. Many of these people got covid. One died. Most were fine. There is likely a “correct” amount of neuroticism, although that obviously changes depending on your circumstances. Extremely high neuroticism would help someone who was Jewish in 1930s Europe decide to get themselves and their family out of there at any cost, but extremely high neuroticism might not be great during the Pax Americana of the last 60 years.
  - thisoneisreal 10mo ago
    Daniel Nettle gives a great layperson's explanation of the Five Factor model in his book "Personality," and the first thing he explains is in line with exactly what you ended on. We exhibit a variety of personalities because different personalities are useful in different environments. Sometimes it's GOOD to be highly neurotic, or low extraversion. Natural selection doesn't care about your internal conscious experience of life, it will make you miserable if that helps you survive.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    Depends which side of Pax Americana you were on in those 60 years. If you're gay or black (or both!) in the Midwest, being neurotic and avoiding getting lynched or smeared rates a lot higher than if you'd be the one doing the smearing. If your mom was almost the victim of a serial killer, she'd be neurotic as hell! And she wouldn't even be wrong about it. These are corner cases of course, but the past 60 years haven't been all gravy for everyone, so we shouldn't think that it was.
  - Talanes 10mo ago
    >Totally disregarding health warnings, and being insubordinately against precautions rather than becoming more neurotic. It's not such a clean map between neuroticism and reaction there. My father was very against the precautions in a clearly neurotic manner. To the point where he was just sitting at home ranting about how he couldn't go anywhere or do anything without the vaccine, months after anywhere except a few voluntarily strict venues had stopped checking.
lisbbb 10mo ago
It's highly questionable whether she changed her personality at all. Why is being extraverted so highly praised, anyways?
- dryarzeg 10mo ago
  I guess it's because being extroverted is more positive for society as a whole than being introverted. And so society is trying to -- even if it's not always a conscious efforts made -- kind of encourage and reward this type of behaviour. EDIT: of course it's not all that simple. IMHO a society of pure extroverts would be an unstable network of salespeople with nothing to sell and no one to engineer and manufacture the things needed. I'm joking here, but... :)
  - NeutralCrane 10mo ago
    I’m not sure the statement “being extroverted is more positive for society as a whole than being introverted” is true.
    - dryarzeg 10mo ago
      I'm not a psychologist, neither I'm a sociologist, so I may be wrong. It's just my guess, don't take it too seriously.
  - grugagag 10mo ago
    Society does need quiet thoughtful people even though they’re usually outside the spotlight and harder to get their recognition.
    - dryarzeg 10mo ago
      No one says they are not needed. It's just that extroverted individuals typically create more relationships within society, and those relationships are usually stronger. However, it's not always the case -- for example, introverted individuals may have a smaller number of relationships, but those relationships may be much stronger. Society exists because of those relationships, and so it is good for its survival and success if the number of relationships or connections within society is growing and they are becoming stronger. It is basically the existential need for any society. (I'm sorry if I'm wrong, I'm not a specialist in this field, it's just a bunch of guesses based on my observations)
cornhole 10mo ago
tl;dr cbt + exposure therapy
matsemann 10mo ago
Hmm, but I don't want to change it. It's me, for better or worse. And since these are often two things on a sliding scale (like agreeableness/assertiveness), there is no right or wrong. Maybe I should be more assertive some times, but that also comes with some drawbacks. I'm fine with where I am. Or maybe that's just my personality speaking, being stoic and content.
- Trasmatta 10mo ago
  Sounds like you're content with yours and shouldn't change it! But many other people aren't content with theirs, and find it brings them a high level of suffering.
- the-smug-one 10mo ago
  Maybe it's useful to consider it a way to practice being in different ways? To be good at being agreeable and assertive, neurotic (someone tell me why that's ever good), and so on, would really give you an edge at life.
  - Barrin92 10mo ago
    > (someone tell me why that's ever good) there's a quite a few benefits to it. Neurotic people tend to be more self aware, more attuned to danger, more open to recognizing risks than most people. It also often correlates with high conscientiousness. The very thing you're arguing for, being willing to practice different ways that is to say be unstable, is a feature of neuroticism. With neurotic people in particular in our age the fault often isn't so much the person as it is that they don't fit in environments that demand compliance, reliability and a kind of industrial standardized behavior.
- wincy 10mo ago
  That’s great, for me that sliding personality scale (particularly of conscientiousness) was at a point of “we have a serious cockroach infestation, despite having been a licensed exterminator in the past, I think I’ll play video games all weekend” or “I don’t feel like filing my taxes for five years”. For people wondering, we have been cockroach free for several years and I ended up hiring a CPA to file all five years of taxes (after the government came banging on my door saying I owed a considerable amount of money which I didn’t actually owe, thank goodness). The thing is, I was content to just ignore these problems as they didn’t affect me MOST of the time. I only got a few cockroaches on me while I was sleeping, and the government won’t bother you for a few years. In retrospect I’m disgusted by the former especially, and annoyed about the latter, but when you’re living in that situation it’s hard to get yourself out of it. To be clear, I wasn’t particularly depressed, I just would get annoyed when I thought of doing anything other than exactly what I wanted to do at any given time. I guess you can argue there’s no right or wrong when your life is in relative order but I think it’s naive to use this as general advice.
bschmidt25013 10mo ago
[dead]
readthenotes1 10mo ago
I assume that what really happened is that the author was more capable of answering the questions they way hen wanted to. A year from now, it'd be interesting to see how hen is doing. (I'm not asserting that personality is fixed; rather, I'm asserting that 6 weeks is too short a measurement period, and that most of us are not very good at self-assessment)
- IshKebab 10mo ago
  Yeah since it's self-reported and they had been taking actions to change the results that they self-reported, there's a pretty strong "I'm sure it did something" incentive to say it worked when it didn't really.
- Jach 10mo ago
  The way I'd phrase it is personality is stable, not fixed. But I would also be interested in a followup in a year or two. I also misread the bit at the end first: the partner tested and re-tested themselves and got pretty much the same thing, this is rather expected when you're not in the process of trying to "change" and also gaming the test to get results you want rather than what's true. I would have liked to see the partner take the test but fill in the answers for the author -- that way we have both the author's assessment of their own personality and the partner's assessment of the author's personality, before and after.
ryandv 10mo ago
People have been doing this for millenia.
labrador 10mo ago
> Although most people profess to want to change at least one aspect of their personality, those who will put the effort in are surely far fewer Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous don't actually do the 12 steps as designed by Bill Wilson. They don't understand that it's a piece of spiritual technology designed to produce a spiritual awakening and a reorganization of personality. I've met many people who have become better people through the 12 steps. I've rewritten them here to give a basic outline and remove any mention of a theistic god. I am not a professional so please forgive me if I've over-simplified or got something wrong. This is how it worked for me at a basic level. 1 - Take a look and see if you have a problem. Admit you have a problem if you have one. You can't fix a problem you refuse to recognize. 2 - Recognize you've tried to solve it by yourself and have failed. You need help from others. 3 - Humble yourself enough to ask for help and be ready to follow direction 4 - List all the complaints people have about you and analyze what you might be doing wrong 5 - Share your failings, no matter how embarrassing, with a trusted other on the principle that confession is good for the soul and sunlight is the best disinfectant 6 - Ask yourself if you're really willing to change. That's not a given. Maybe you aren't. 7 - If you are then do what it takes to change. This is going to be different for everyone. 8 - Look at step 4 and see who you need to apologize to 9 - When you feel you are ready and sufficiently reformed, apologize and make restitution to those on the list you made in step 8. To those that aren't willing to talk, let it go and don't bother them. 10 - Make it a practice to do steps 4 through 9 as needed. We believe in progress not perfection. 11 - We need to remind ourselves daily that we have a problem that we can't solve alone and that we may need the help of others on any given day. I've heard it called a disease of forgetfulness. We may need to wake up in the morning to read and pray if so inclined. As one person told me, "carve out a little piece of each day for the 12 steps" 12 - Carry this message to others who are still suffering
- satvikpendem 10mo ago
  The 12 step program is rooted in Christian theology and treats alcoholism more like a sin rather than a health problem so I can understand why some don't want to fully follow it.
  - stuffn 10mo ago
jokoon 10mo ago
I don't think that's very interesting. Personality disorders or mental health, those matter much more and are real problems for a lot of people. Personality matters only because it allows health professionals to differentiate what is a problem from what is not. It's not so hard to change behavior when mental health is not an obstacle or is not involved. Changing personality sounds like a nice luxury for people who don't have mental health problems or personality disorders And even then, I don't really see the point of changing personality, since a personality is not a real problem, only personality disorders (the medical term) really are problems. And then there are thought patterns that can be shaped by mental illness that stay even after symptoms go away, those might be changed with CBT.
- alonsonic 10mo ago
  If you read the article you would have seen that researches believe adjusting personality traits like neuroticism helps treat important mental health conditions more effectively than attacking the mental health condition directly.
  - jokoon 10mo ago
    "believes", or "can prove"?
zoogeny 10mo ago
A couple of anecdata for those interested in this. The first is the gospel of Mark, which unlike the other synoptic gospels starts with Jesus, probably around the age of 30, coming across John the Baptist and being baptized. Subsequently, Jesus went off into the desert where he prayed for 40 days. Second is the alchemical process of creating the philosophers stone. Jung argued that this was a description of a process akin to individuation. He believed that what was on the surface metallurgical work (transmuting lead to gold) was actually an obscure formula for remaking the psyche, from whatever was pre-programmed by society into what the individual actually wanted. This process was said to take 40 days. I think a big trap is mistaking who we are from who we appear to be. Some people try to "seem" a particular way, thinking that they can only change their appearance, like changing one's clothes. The alchemical view that Jung put forward was a bit more radical, suggesting that we can fundamentally change ourselves. Many people in our modern society experiment on themselves to change their physical bodies and to change their minds. I believe it is interesting to consider similar experimentation on how we change our spirit/emotions.
- IshKebab 10mo ago
  Religious and philosophical pseudo-profoundity doesn't count as "anacdata".
  - zoogeny 10mo ago
    You may have mistook my post as advocating Christianity or even Alchemy. In the same way that we realized that the plants people used to treat pain contained chemicals that are actually effective at treating pain, and in the same way that modern science seems to agree that fasting (a once religious practice) is effective for health, we can gain some insight on personality by looking at how it was addressed in historical contexts. There was a video posted recently about a Sufi thinker whose ideas are quite close to modern CBT practices [1]. I think it is a good thing when we recognize ideas from the past as being related to modern ideas. I think we can do so without diminishing the modern and also without diminishing the past. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26hltikcyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26hltikcyk
- 10mo ago
andy99 10mo ago
I heard a story that John Conway decided on the train on the way to university that he was going to turn over a new leaf and be outgoing and talkative, and then was.
- nuancebydefault 10mo ago
  I had a business trip with someone who very easily started talking to strangers, but he wasn't even a very fast or smooth talker, but he felt very agreeable when communicating. Back then I felt jealous of that trait. I said to myself I want to be like that, just be able to do smaltalk with strangers. And I simply tried, within weeks I was able to do just that, even with people much prettier or confident than me, and I never looked back. Over time a feel i need to hold myself back even. Often I have to say to myself: there's no point starting a talk now other than my own feeling good about it, so I hold it in.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- wumms 10mo ago
  From https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-...: As he sat on the train to Cambridge, it dawned on him that since none of his classmates would be joining him at university, he would be able to transform himself into a new person: an extrovert! He wasn’t sure it would work. He worried that his introversion might be too entrenched, but he decided to try. He would be boisterous and witty, he would tell funny stories at parties, he would laugh at himself – that was key. “Roughly speaking,” he recalled, “I was going to become the kind of person you see now. It was a free decision.”
  - goopypoop 10mo ago
    i have fond memories of my own decision to become a tosser
kayo_20211030 10mo ago
OT (or CBT) is effectual. But, open neurotics are the funnest people.
GuB-42 10mo ago
I am not convinced that you can change your personality just like that. In fact, I find it striking how little people change their core traits. However, people can learn to live with them, and I think it is the idea here. You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning. You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate. You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc... You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints. Also understand that the "big 5" are not stats to maximize, while some traits are linked to success, they all have downsides. Extroverts and people high in agreeableness tend to follow the group even when it is wrong, lacking personal judgment. People low in neuroticism can get themselves into trouble because they didn't consider the negative consequences of their choices. Conscientious people can be rigid and obsessive, and there is such a thing as being too open (are you open to murder?). The idea is: don't change your personality, you will probably fail anyways, but make the best of what you have, by making small adjustments. Ultimately, I think it is what the article suggests, once you take away the "big 5 scoring" bit.
- HPsquared 10mo ago
  Also if you have learned all the skills appropriate for your natural personality, it might be a bit "fish out of water" if your personality were to suddenly change. You might change from a hermit into an extrovert who really chases human contact but poor social skills, say. That sounds like it'd lead to a lot of trouble.
- kelnos 10mo ago
  I'm not sure there's a material difference, though. > You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. What's the difference, though? Having well-developed social skills is an aspect of extraversion. > You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning. Isn't this the same thing as being less neurotic? If the overall effect is lower stress when confronted with the same situations and stimuli, then hasn't your personality changed? > You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate. Being considerate is just an aspect of agreeableness. If you become more considerate, then you do become more agreeable. > You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc... I would argue that the act of making those schedules and checklists in order to ensure you get your tasks done is, in and of itself, an act of being conscientious, so teaching yourself to do those things does indeed make you a more conscientious person. > You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints. What is the goal of educating yourself on opposing viewpoints if not to understand different people better? You may still disagree with those viewpoints just as strongly, but the simple fact of a newfound willingness to educate yourself is an increase in openness. To me, you are focusing on the mechanism here, and not on the outcome. After reading this article I found and took a big-five test[0] and found that some questions did try to assess how you feel about aspects of yourself, but many (most?) are about outcomes in your life. That is, "do you feel like it's easy to complete tasks?" is a different question from "do you tend to complete tasks?" The first one is about how it feels: even if you do tend to complete your tasks, you may feel like it's only because you've created your task-completion framework, but it takes concerted, difficult effort to stick with the framework. The second is about the outcome: you do complete your tasks, and the mechanism behind it isn't relevant. I think both things (the feelings and the outcome) are important to assessing the personality traits, to be sure, but changing the outcome (even if the feelings have not changed at all) is a material change. And I'd suspect that, if you do succeed in changing the outcome, the feelings will change over time, at least to some extent. [0] https://bigfive-test.com/ https://bigfive-test.com/ (doesn't require some bullshit registration to see your results)
chiefalchemist 10mo ago
After multiple recommendations, recently I finally read “The Courage to be Disliked” which is a fictional representation of Alfred Adler’s view of psychology / human behavior. Shifting from a Freudian paradigm to an Adlerian one has been massive. I’d rather be an accountable self-determining adult than an adult who attributes my flaws to traumas long gone. If you’re serious about self-directed change, Adler is a good place to start.
- jamiek88 10mo ago
  Seconded! Literally changed my life this book.
robocat 10mo ago
A bit worrying that she measured change by using an "online personality test to assess where I currently scored on the Big Five". I do believe that we can change our internal responses by slowly teaching ourselves to respond differently. However I also believe that thinking about thinking is a dangerous activity. The risks are training yourself to be neurotic, and a habit of overthinking. We can use our rational minds to change our irrational responses. However how many people are skilled at teaching themselves? We could look at how good they are at teaching others (especially emotional kids).
- thechao 10mo ago
  I took the test, and the results were completely meaningless. It said that I have a moderate or below average interest in science or engineering. This is patently wrong. This is a deep, abiding, long-term love-affair. It's why I've got a PhD in programming language theory, and have done all the course work, but not the dissertation for PhD's in Economics, Computational Biology, Statistics, Epidemiology, and Mathematics. So... yeah. Complete & utter baloney.
  - throw4847285 10mo ago
    What Big Five test rated you on your interest in science? It only rates 5 factors by definition.
    - thechao 10mo ago
      Right? It was a weird test. It started with OCEAN — which got a completely different result than the real OCEAN tests I've done — and then moved to a weird interest/aptitude test. It's clearly some BS marketing thing.
      - machomaster 10mo ago
        So you completed some BS online test, realized it, but still use its results to criticize the properly administered tests. This is weird. Just make a credible test (e.g. Jordan Peterson hosts one) and only after that draw conclusions.
jtrn 10mo ago
Having worked as a therapist for years, treating thousands of client, and read more books and studies on this than I can count, I can for certain say that is MUCH MUCH simpler to change the environment than your personality to improve well beeing and general functioning. To tired to pick a apart this article now. But this is feel good nonsense... Just one example, mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome. Also, 6 weeks is nothing. When I worked at inpatient unit we sometimes needed 6 weeks before patient reverted to baseline personality after admittance. This is just as silly as saying that you changed your lifestyle permanently with regard exercises after just a few weeks into your new year's resolution. You MIGHT have, but lets wait untill next year and see if the permanent claim is true.
- tailspin2019 10mo ago
  Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by “change the environment”?
  - callc 10mo ago
    Not OP, but here’s what I think they mean: if you want to eat healthier then get rid of all the junk food in your home. Only buy healthy food. No more deciding between health and unhealthy. You made the choice for your future self by changing your environment.
  - ytoawwhra92 10mo ago
    Move house/town/region/country. Get a new job. Make new friends. Leave bad romantic relationships. Get a pet. Go outside. Etc.
    - AbstractH24 10mo ago
      Bring out different parts of you rather than change who you are.
  - jtrn 10mo ago
gleenn 10mo ago
"The incontinent babblerer at the steering wheel of my mind seemed to fear being asked to step out of the vehicle for a while" - man that typo really reminds me to use the restroom before long rides...
jemmyw 10mo ago
I took the linked test and I was a little disappointed that I scored badly on all creativity measures. But the scale seems a little silly: you score higher for doing a broader range than doing one thing deeply. So I scored badly on visual arts, even though I paint original pieces, because I'm not interested in movies or photography.
burnt-resistor 10mo ago
This drivel doesn't belong on HN.
sreekanth850 10mo ago
What worked for me. Remind yourself every day, with convincing reasons, why you want to change, your brain will gradually rewire itself. don't know if this is technically proven. I quit smoking (Was a chain smoker until 2013) and drinking this way. I also changed from being short-tempered (Had hyper tension) to rarely getting angry nowadays by using the same method.

200 points by andsoitis 10mo ago

reprom 10mo ago

Given that these are malleable I'd be interested in data on how the pandemic affected people's personality measurements. My bet is loads of people would have shot way up on the neuroticism scale.

zero_shift 10mo ago
The strange thing is, whilst I found the pandemic itself very difficult, I came out a much more confident, extraverted person. Actually quite the opposite from my pre COVID personality.
wincy 10mo ago
My wife became much more assertive and disagreeable after we had a special needs child in the NICU for nine months and the constant pressure from doctors to get unnecessary procedures like a tracheostomy. They also said we didn’t have to resuscitate her if we didn’t want to. Constant battles and pressure and my wife can be a stone cold bitch now when she needs to be, where she used to just say “okay”. Our daughter is seven now, she does use a wheelchair, but is normal intelligence and just went in her cute little electric car she got for Christmas with her big sister to a friend’s house down the street. I’m so proud of her, and my wife. So sometimes these traumatic events improve your personality in the sense that they give you a more realistic way of how the world actually works, and how to achieve your goals (especially when those goals are dearly held, like “I want my child to survive and have the best quality of life possible). Also, with COVID I’d imagine a lot of the neuroticism going up or down depended on where you were and your philosophy. For me, and a lot of people leaning conservative, living in the Midwest, I think it is less neurotic, perhaps to our detriment. Totally disregarding health warnings, and being insubordinately against precautions rather than becoming more neurotic. Many of these people got covid. One died. Most were fine. There is likely a “correct” amount of neuroticism, although that obviously changes depending on your circumstances. Extremely high neuroticism would help someone who was Jewish in 1930s Europe decide to get themselves and their family out of there at any cost, but extremely high neuroticism might not be great during the Pax Americana of the last 60 years.
- thisoneisreal 10mo ago
  Daniel Nettle gives a great layperson's explanation of the Five Factor model in his book "Personality," and the first thing he explains is in line with exactly what you ended on. We exhibit a variety of personalities because different personalities are useful in different environments. Sometimes it's GOOD to be highly neurotic, or low extraversion. Natural selection doesn't care about your internal conscious experience of life, it will make you miserable if that helps you survive.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  Depends which side of Pax Americana you were on in those 60 years. If you're gay or black (or both!) in the Midwest, being neurotic and avoiding getting lynched or smeared rates a lot higher than if you'd be the one doing the smearing. If your mom was almost the victim of a serial killer, she'd be neurotic as hell! And she wouldn't even be wrong about it. These are corner cases of course, but the past 60 years haven't been all gravy for everyone, so we shouldn't think that it was.
- Talanes 10mo ago
  >Totally disregarding health warnings, and being insubordinately against precautions rather than becoming more neurotic. It's not such a clean map between neuroticism and reaction there. My father was very against the precautions in a clearly neurotic manner. To the point where he was just sitting at home ranting about how he couldn't go anywhere or do anything without the vaccine, months after anywhere except a few voluntarily strict venues had stopped checking.

lisbbb 10mo ago

It's highly questionable whether she changed her personality at all. Why is being extraverted so highly praised, anyways?

dryarzeg 10mo ago
I guess it's because being extroverted is more positive for society as a whole than being introverted. And so society is trying to -- even if it's not always a conscious efforts made -- kind of encourage and reward this type of behaviour. EDIT: of course it's not all that simple. IMHO a society of pure extroverts would be an unstable network of salespeople with nothing to sell and no one to engineer and manufacture the things needed. I'm joking here, but... :)
- NeutralCrane 10mo ago
  I’m not sure the statement “being extroverted is more positive for society as a whole than being introverted” is true.
  - dryarzeg 10mo ago
    I'm not a psychologist, neither I'm a sociologist, so I may be wrong. It's just my guess, don't take it too seriously.
- grugagag 10mo ago
  Society does need quiet thoughtful people even though they’re usually outside the spotlight and harder to get their recognition.
  - dryarzeg 10mo ago
    No one says they are not needed. It's just that extroverted individuals typically create more relationships within society, and those relationships are usually stronger. However, it's not always the case -- for example, introverted individuals may have a smaller number of relationships, but those relationships may be much stronger. Society exists because of those relationships, and so it is good for its survival and success if the number of relationships or connections within society is growing and they are becoming stronger. It is basically the existential need for any society. (I'm sorry if I'm wrong, I'm not a specialist in this field, it's just a bunch of guesses based on my observations)

cornhole 10mo ago

tl;dr cbt + exposure therapy

matsemann 10mo ago

Hmm, but I don't want to change it. It's me, for better or worse. And since these are often two things on a sliding scale (like agreeableness/assertiveness), there is no right or wrong. Maybe I should be more assertive some times, but that also comes with some drawbacks. I'm fine with where I am. Or maybe that's just my personality speaking, being stoic and content.

Trasmatta 10mo ago
Sounds like you're content with yours and shouldn't change it! But many other people aren't content with theirs, and find it brings them a high level of suffering.
the-smug-one 10mo ago
Maybe it's useful to consider it a way to practice being in different ways? To be good at being agreeable and assertive, neurotic (someone tell me why that's ever good), and so on, would really give you an edge at life.
- Barrin92 10mo ago
  > (someone tell me why that's ever good) there's a quite a few benefits to it. Neurotic people tend to be more self aware, more attuned to danger, more open to recognizing risks than most people. It also often correlates with high conscientiousness. The very thing you're arguing for, being willing to practice different ways that is to say be unstable, is a feature of neuroticism. With neurotic people in particular in our age the fault often isn't so much the person as it is that they don't fit in environments that demand compliance, reliability and a kind of industrial standardized behavior.
wincy 10mo ago
That’s great, for me that sliding personality scale (particularly of conscientiousness) was at a point of “we have a serious cockroach infestation, despite having been a licensed exterminator in the past, I think I’ll play video games all weekend” or “I don’t feel like filing my taxes for five years”. For people wondering, we have been cockroach free for several years and I ended up hiring a CPA to file all five years of taxes (after the government came banging on my door saying I owed a considerable amount of money which I didn’t actually owe, thank goodness). The thing is, I was content to just ignore these problems as they didn’t affect me MOST of the time. I only got a few cockroaches on me while I was sleeping, and the government won’t bother you for a few years. In retrospect I’m disgusted by the former especially, and annoyed about the latter, but when you’re living in that situation it’s hard to get yourself out of it. To be clear, I wasn’t particularly depressed, I just would get annoyed when I thought of doing anything other than exactly what I wanted to do at any given time. I guess you can argue there’s no right or wrong when your life is in relative order but I think it’s naive to use this as general advice.

bschmidt25013 10mo ago

[dead]

readthenotes1 10mo ago

I assume that what really happened is that the author was more capable of answering the questions they way hen wanted to. A year from now, it'd be interesting to see how hen is doing. (I'm not asserting that personality is fixed; rather, I'm asserting that 6 weeks is too short a measurement period, and that most of us are not very good at self-assessment)

IshKebab 10mo ago
Yeah since it's self-reported and they had been taking actions to change the results that they self-reported, there's a pretty strong "I'm sure it did something" incentive to say it worked when it didn't really.
Jach 10mo ago
The way I'd phrase it is personality is stable, not fixed. But I would also be interested in a followup in a year or two. I also misread the bit at the end first: the partner tested and re-tested themselves and got pretty much the same thing, this is rather expected when you're not in the process of trying to "change" and also gaming the test to get results you want rather than what's true. I would have liked to see the partner take the test but fill in the answers for the author -- that way we have both the author's assessment of their own personality and the partner's assessment of the author's personality, before and after.

ryandv 10mo ago

People have been doing this for millenia.

labrador 10mo ago

> Although most people profess to want to change at least one aspect of their personality, those who will put the effort in are surely far fewer Many people in Alcoholics Anonymous don't actually do the 12 steps as designed by Bill Wilson. They don't understand that it's a piece of spiritual technology designed to produce a spiritual awakening and a reorganization of personality. I've met many people who have become better people through the 12 steps. I've rewritten them here to give a basic outline and remove any mention of a theistic god. I am not a professional so please forgive me if I've over-simplified or got something wrong. This is how it worked for me at a basic level. 1 - Take a look and see if you have a problem. Admit you have a problem if you have one. You can't fix a problem you refuse to recognize. 2 - Recognize you've tried to solve it by yourself and have failed. You need help from others. 3 - Humble yourself enough to ask for help and be ready to follow direction 4 - List all the complaints people have about you and analyze what you might be doing wrong 5 - Share your failings, no matter how embarrassing, with a trusted other on the principle that confession is good for the soul and sunlight is the best disinfectant 6 - Ask yourself if you're really willing to change. That's not a given. Maybe you aren't. 7 - If you are then do what it takes to change. This is going to be different for everyone. 8 - Look at step 4 and see who you need to apologize to 9 - When you feel you are ready and sufficiently reformed, apologize and make restitution to those on the list you made in step 8. To those that aren't willing to talk, let it go and don't bother them. 10 - Make it a practice to do steps 4 through 9 as needed. We believe in progress not perfection. 11 - We need to remind ourselves daily that we have a problem that we can't solve alone and that we may need the help of others on any given day. I've heard it called a disease of forgetfulness. We may need to wake up in the morning to read and pray if so inclined. As one person told me, "carve out a little piece of each day for the 12 steps" 12 - Carry this message to others who are still suffering

satvikpendem 10mo ago
The 12 step program is rooted in Christian theology and treats alcoholism more like a sin rather than a health problem so I can understand why some don't want to fully follow it.
- stuffn 10mo ago

jokoon 10mo ago

I don't think that's very interesting. Personality disorders or mental health, those matter much more and are real problems for a lot of people. Personality matters only because it allows health professionals to differentiate what is a problem from what is not. It's not so hard to change behavior when mental health is not an obstacle or is not involved. Changing personality sounds like a nice luxury for people who don't have mental health problems or personality disorders And even then, I don't really see the point of changing personality, since a personality is not a real problem, only personality disorders (the medical term) really are problems. And then there are thought patterns that can be shaped by mental illness that stay even after symptoms go away, those might be changed with CBT.

alonsonic 10mo ago
If you read the article you would have seen that researches believe adjusting personality traits like neuroticism helps treat important mental health conditions more effectively than attacking the mental health condition directly.
- jokoon 10mo ago
  "believes", or "can prove"?

zoogeny 10mo ago

A couple of anecdata for those interested in this. The first is the gospel of Mark, which unlike the other synoptic gospels starts with Jesus, probably around the age of 30, coming across John the Baptist and being baptized. Subsequently, Jesus went off into the desert where he prayed for 40 days. Second is the alchemical process of creating the philosophers stone. Jung argued that this was a description of a process akin to individuation. He believed that what was on the surface metallurgical work (transmuting lead to gold) was actually an obscure formula for remaking the psyche, from whatever was pre-programmed by society into what the individual actually wanted. This process was said to take 40 days. I think a big trap is mistaking who we are from who we appear to be. Some people try to "seem" a particular way, thinking that they can only change their appearance, like changing one's clothes. The alchemical view that Jung put forward was a bit more radical, suggesting that we can fundamentally change ourselves. Many people in our modern society experiment on themselves to change their physical bodies and to change their minds. I believe it is interesting to consider similar experimentation on how we change our spirit/emotions.

IshKebab 10mo ago
Religious and philosophical pseudo-profoundity doesn't count as "anacdata".
- zoogeny 10mo ago
  You may have mistook my post as advocating Christianity or even Alchemy. In the same way that we realized that the plants people used to treat pain contained chemicals that are actually effective at treating pain, and in the same way that modern science seems to agree that fasting (a once religious practice) is effective for health, we can gain some insight on personality by looking at how it was addressed in historical contexts. There was a video posted recently about a Sufi thinker whose ideas are quite close to modern CBT practices [1]. I think it is a good thing when we recognize ideas from the past as being related to modern ideas. I think we can do so without diminishing the modern and also without diminishing the past. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26hltikcyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d26hltikcyk
10mo ago

andy99 10mo ago

I heard a story that John Conway decided on the train on the way to university that he was going to turn over a new leaf and be outgoing and talkative, and then was.

nuancebydefault 10mo ago
I had a business trip with someone who very easily started talking to strangers, but he wasn't even a very fast or smooth talker, but he felt very agreeable when communicating. Back then I felt jealous of that trait. I said to myself I want to be like that, just be able to do smaltalk with strangers. And I simply tried, within weeks I was able to do just that, even with people much prettier or confident than me, and I never looked back. Over time a feel i need to hold myself back even. Often I have to say to myself: there's no point starting a talk now other than my own feeling good about it, so I hold it in.
deleted 10mo ago
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wumms 10mo ago
From https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-conway-the-most-charismatic-mathematician-in-the-world https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/23/john-horton-...: As he sat on the train to Cambridge, it dawned on him that since none of his classmates would be joining him at university, he would be able to transform himself into a new person: an extrovert! He wasn’t sure it would work. He worried that his introversion might be too entrenched, but he decided to try. He would be boisterous and witty, he would tell funny stories at parties, he would laugh at himself – that was key. “Roughly speaking,” he recalled, “I was going to become the kind of person you see now. It was a free decision.”
- goopypoop 10mo ago
  i have fond memories of my own decision to become a tosser

kayo_20211030 10mo ago

OT (or CBT) is effectual. But, open neurotics are the funnest people.

GuB-42 10mo ago

I am not convinced that you can change your personality just like that. In fact, I find it striking how little people change their core traits. However, people can learn to live with them, and I think it is the idea here. You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning. You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate. You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc... You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints. Also understand that the "big 5" are not stats to maximize, while some traits are linked to success, they all have downsides. Extroverts and people high in agreeableness tend to follow the group even when it is wrong, lacking personal judgment. People low in neuroticism can get themselves into trouble because they didn't consider the negative consequences of their choices. Conscientious people can be rigid and obsessive, and there is such a thing as being too open (are you open to murder?). The idea is: don't change your personality, you will probably fail anyways, but make the best of what you have, by making small adjustments. Ultimately, I think it is what the article suggests, once you take away the "big 5 scoring" bit.

HPsquared 10mo ago
Also if you have learned all the skills appropriate for your natural personality, it might be a bit "fish out of water" if your personality were to suddenly change. You might change from a hermit into an extrovert who really chases human contact but poor social skills, say. That sounds like it'd lead to a lot of trouble.
kelnos 10mo ago
I'm not sure there's a material difference, though. > You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. What's the difference, though? Having well-developed social skills is an aspect of extraversion. > You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning. Isn't this the same thing as being less neurotic? If the overall effect is lower stress when confronted with the same situations and stimuli, then hasn't your personality changed? > You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate. Being considerate is just an aspect of agreeableness. If you become more considerate, then you do become more agreeable. > You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc... I would argue that the act of making those schedules and checklists in order to ensure you get your tasks done is, in and of itself, an act of being conscientious, so teaching yourself to do those things does indeed make you a more conscientious person. > You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints. What is the goal of educating yourself on opposing viewpoints if not to understand different people better? You may still disagree with those viewpoints just as strongly, but the simple fact of a newfound willingness to educate yourself is an increase in openness. To me, you are focusing on the mechanism here, and not on the outcome. After reading this article I found and took a big-five test[0] and found that some questions did try to assess how you feel about aspects of yourself, but many (most?) are about outcomes in your life. That is, "do you feel like it's easy to complete tasks?" is a different question from "do you tend to complete tasks?" The first one is about how it feels: even if you do tend to complete your tasks, you may feel like it's only because you've created your task-completion framework, but it takes concerted, difficult effort to stick with the framework. The second is about the outcome: you do complete your tasks, and the mechanism behind it isn't relevant. I think both things (the feelings and the outcome) are important to assessing the personality traits, to be sure, but changing the outcome (even if the feelings have not changed at all) is a material change. And I'd suspect that, if you do succeed in changing the outcome, the feelings will change over time, at least to some extent. [0] https://bigfive-test.com/ https://bigfive-test.com/ (doesn't require some bullshit registration to see your results)

chiefalchemist 10mo ago

After multiple recommendations, recently I finally read “The Courage to be Disliked” which is a fictional representation of Alfred Adler’s view of psychology / human behavior. Shifting from a Freudian paradigm to an Adlerian one has been massive. I’d rather be an accountable self-determining adult than an adult who attributes my flaws to traumas long gone. If you’re serious about self-directed change, Adler is a good place to start.

jamiek88 10mo ago
Seconded! Literally changed my life this book.

robocat 10mo ago

A bit worrying that she measured change by using an "online personality test to assess where I currently scored on the Big Five". I do believe that we can change our internal responses by slowly teaching ourselves to respond differently. However I also believe that thinking about thinking is a dangerous activity. The risks are training yourself to be neurotic, and a habit of overthinking. We can use our rational minds to change our irrational responses. However how many people are skilled at teaching themselves? We could look at how good they are at teaching others (especially emotional kids).

thechao 10mo ago
I took the test, and the results were completely meaningless. It said that I have a moderate or below average interest in science or engineering. This is patently wrong. This is a deep, abiding, long-term love-affair. It's why I've got a PhD in programming language theory, and have done all the course work, but not the dissertation for PhD's in Economics, Computational Biology, Statistics, Epidemiology, and Mathematics. So... yeah. Complete & utter baloney.
- throw4847285 10mo ago
  What Big Five test rated you on your interest in science? It only rates 5 factors by definition.
  - thechao 10mo ago
    Right? It was a weird test. It started with OCEAN — which got a completely different result than the real OCEAN tests I've done — and then moved to a weird interest/aptitude test. It's clearly some BS marketing thing.
    - machomaster 10mo ago
      So you completed some BS online test, realized it, but still use its results to criticize the properly administered tests. This is weird. Just make a credible test (e.g. Jordan Peterson hosts one) and only after that draw conclusions.

jtrn 10mo ago

Having worked as a therapist for years, treating thousands of client, and read more books and studies on this than I can count, I can for certain say that is MUCH MUCH simpler to change the environment than your personality to improve well beeing and general functioning. To tired to pick a apart this article now. But this is feel good nonsense... Just one example, mindfulness is not even a fraction as effective as most people claim. It always fall apart when you do a proper study with actual measurable effects on life and happiness as outcome. Also, 6 weeks is nothing. When I worked at inpatient unit we sometimes needed 6 weeks before patient reverted to baseline personality after admittance. This is just as silly as saying that you changed your lifestyle permanently with regard exercises after just a few weeks into your new year's resolution. You MIGHT have, but lets wait untill next year and see if the permanent claim is true.

tailspin2019 10mo ago
Would you be willing to expand on what you mean by “change the environment”?
- callc 10mo ago
  Not OP, but here’s what I think they mean: if you want to eat healthier then get rid of all the junk food in your home. Only buy healthy food. No more deciding between health and unhealthy. You made the choice for your future self by changing your environment.
- ytoawwhra92 10mo ago
  Move house/town/region/country. Get a new job. Make new friends. Leave bad romantic relationships. Get a pet. Go outside. Etc.
  - AbstractH24 10mo ago
    Bring out different parts of you rather than change who you are.
- jtrn 10mo ago

gleenn 10mo ago

"The incontinent babblerer at the steering wheel of my mind seemed to fear being asked to step out of the vehicle for a while" - man that typo really reminds me to use the restroom before long rides...

jemmyw 10mo ago

I took the linked test and I was a little disappointed that I scored badly on all creativity measures. But the scale seems a little silly: you score higher for doing a broader range than doing one thing deeply. So I scored badly on visual arts, even though I paint original pieces, because I'm not interested in movies or photography.

burnt-resistor 10mo ago

This drivel doesn't belong on HN.

sreekanth850 10mo ago

What worked for me. Remind yourself every day, with convincing reasons, why you want to change, your brain will gradually rewire itself. don't know if this is technically proven. I quit smoking (Was a chain smoker until 2013) and drinking this way. I also changed from being short-tempered (Had hyper tension) to rarely getting angry nowadays by using the same method.