7 ms·

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), th

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.
- PKop 10mo ago
  > I just would get annoyed when I thought of doing anything other than exactly what I wanted to do at any given time. Can relate strongly to this, especially when it involves other people's whims or need for you to be involved in some such that you just don't care about nor want to be bothered with.
fastball 10mo ago
The Big 5 is a sliding scale with no clear "right or wrong", but something like being an asshole has little upside and it might be good to change.
- kgwxd 10mo ago
  I don't know, the way things are going, being an asshole seems to bring the most "success".
kelnos 10mo ago
> Hmm, but I don't want to change it. It's me, for better or worse. That's certainly your prerogative, but I think there are a lot of people who have identified traits in themselves that they believe are negative forces in their lives, and would love to change them if they could. "For better or worse" is the issue; some people do want to better their worse-ness, even if it might change what "me" is to some extent. But I don't really put much stock in the "it's me" declaration. I'm in my mid-40s, and if I look back on just the last 20 years of my life, I have changed so much over that time. Taking one example from the big five, I would have scored low on the extraversion scale in my 20s, very high in my 30s, and today I'd say I'm somewhere in between. I've changed in other aspects as well. These changes were for the most part not conscious changes. I don't think I ever set out to change these personality traits, but they changed all the same. How is that better or more "natural" than making deliberate choices and taking specific actions in order to change, instead?
paulcole 10mo ago
If you became discontent enough, would you be open to changing?
borroka 10mo ago
It is certainly fine where you are; the world is a big place and it is charming because it varies in people and experiences. Some time ago, I wrote something about "mood", which can be adapted, or parallels can be found, with "personality", after all, who knows who we really are. "Recognizing our moods and then changing them is not easy, but neither is it impossible. It requires considerable initial effort to get to know ourselves and constant practice to ensure that this knowledge does not disappear at the first sign of crisis. As always, when we try to change a behavior or habit that we don't like, the first step is to convince ourselves that it is possible, the second is to create the change, and the third is to maintain it. Unfortunately, more often than we would like, our moods and actions are not aligned, they do not go in the same direction. As has happened to everyone with an Internet connection and a profile on social media, we can be in a bad mood after reading a post on social media written by someone we do not know about an issue that does not concern us. Furthermore, and I have experienced this many times in my life, we can wake up annoyed, angry, unnecessarily combative for any reason or, often, for no particular reason, and carry on with this cloudy state of mind for hours. Sometimes for days. We can, and often do, accept bad moods, irritation, and conflict as inevitable, part of our personality, a healthy reaction to an unfair world that does not reward us, does not gratify us, gives to others what it should give to us. As I said years ago to a girlfriend of mine when she complained about some of my behavior that she considered wrong—-almost always unfairly, I would say, but I am not my own harshest critic—-we wake up in the morning in a bad mood, perhaps because of hormones that do as they please, the bedroom is too hot or too cold, the sugar in the blood goes up and wakes you up and then goes down and puts you back to sleep. But instead of accepting a bitter awakening as the result of chance or an overly heavy omelet, we often start looking, like a Lagotto Romagnolo would for truffles, for other causes and culprits, real or imagined, for our bad mood. I suspect that we struggle to change our moods because we see them as part of ourselves or as defining who we are. But is a bad mood that goes away after half an hour of afternoon sleep or melts like snow in the sun when someone, after much intolerable and unfair waiting, finally recognizes how beautiful and charming we are with a smart compliment, really part of us? My personality, which, like everyone else's, derives from a mixture of genes, experiences, chemical and hormonal reactions to food, words spoken and heard and, in my case in particular, humidity, is not what I would describe as tremendously jovial, either by nature or habit. But following these reflections on moods, I began to think that I should not accept this tendency toward ill will: as I read somewhere, pessimists give the impression of being intelligent, but it is optimists who are successful. As I was saying, I used to wake up in the morning annoyed, wanting to argue with someone, or rather with everyone, wallowing in my tormented thoughts. But I decided, hesitantly at first and then with determination, to change. I began to recognize the movement of my mood toward irritation and distraction, and instead of letting it continue undisturbed, I began to remind myself of the opportunities of the new day, the life ahead, and the hopes and possibilities that come with it. And I realized that this brief act of persuasion was often enough to change my mood, to put me in a more positive frame of mind for the day ahead, whatever difficulties or pleasures it might present. It's not that being irritated or in an aggressive mood should always be avoided, and even less so the sadness that follows an unfortunate event. It's just that irritation and aggression should be used sparingly: it must be the right mood for the occasion."

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.

PKop 10mo ago
> I just would get annoyed when I thought of doing anything other than exactly what I wanted to do at any given time. Can relate strongly to this, especially when it involves other people's whims or need for you to be involved in some such that you just don't care about nor want to be bothered with.

fastball 10mo ago

The Big 5 is a sliding scale with no clear "right or wrong", but something like being an asshole has little upside and it might be good to change.

kgwxd 10mo ago
I don't know, the way things are going, being an asshole seems to bring the most "success".

kelnos 10mo ago

> Hmm, but I don't want to change it. It's me, for better or worse. That's certainly your prerogative, but I think there are a lot of people who have identified traits in themselves that they believe are negative forces in their lives, and would love to change them if they could. "For better or worse" is the issue; some people do want to better their worse-ness, even if it might change what "me" is to some extent. But I don't really put much stock in the "it's me" declaration. I'm in my mid-40s, and if I look back on just the last 20 years of my life, I have changed so much over that time. Taking one example from the big five, I would have scored low on the extraversion scale in my 20s, very high in my 30s, and today I'd say I'm somewhere in between. I've changed in other aspects as well. These changes were for the most part not conscious changes. I don't think I ever set out to change these personality traits, but they changed all the same. How is that better or more "natural" than making deliberate choices and taking specific actions in order to change, instead?

paulcole 10mo ago

If you became discontent enough, would you be open to changing?

borroka 10mo ago

It is certainly fine where you are; the world is a big place and it is charming because it varies in people and experiences. Some time ago, I wrote something about "mood", which can be adapted, or parallels can be found, with "personality", after all, who knows who we really are. "Recognizing our moods and then changing them is not easy, but neither is it impossible. It requires considerable initial effort to get to know ourselves and constant practice to ensure that this knowledge does not disappear at the first sign of crisis. As always, when we try to change a behavior or habit that we don't like, the first step is to convince ourselves that it is possible, the second is to create the change, and the third is to maintain it. Unfortunately, more often than we would like, our moods and actions are not aligned, they do not go in the same direction. As has happened to everyone with an Internet connection and a profile on social media, we can be in a bad mood after reading a post on social media written by someone we do not know about an issue that does not concern us. Furthermore, and I have experienced this many times in my life, we can wake up annoyed, angry, unnecessarily combative for any reason or, often, for no particular reason, and carry on with this cloudy state of mind for hours. Sometimes for days. We can, and often do, accept bad moods, irritation, and conflict as inevitable, part of our personality, a healthy reaction to an unfair world that does not reward us, does not gratify us, gives to others what it should give to us. As I said years ago to a girlfriend of mine when she complained about some of my behavior that she considered wrong—-almost always unfairly, I would say, but I am not my own harshest critic—-we wake up in the morning in a bad mood, perhaps because of hormones that do as they please, the bedroom is too hot or too cold, the sugar in the blood goes up and wakes you up and then goes down and puts you back to sleep. But instead of accepting a bitter awakening as the result of chance or an overly heavy omelet, we often start looking, like a Lagotto Romagnolo would for truffles, for other causes and culprits, real or imagined, for our bad mood. I suspect that we struggle to change our moods because we see them as part of ourselves or as defining who we are. But is a bad mood that goes away after half an hour of afternoon sleep or melts like snow in the sun when someone, after much intolerable and unfair waiting, finally recognizes how beautiful and charming we are with a smart compliment, really part of us? My personality, which, like everyone else's, derives from a mixture of genes, experiences, chemical and hormonal reactions to food, words spoken and heard and, in my case in particular, humidity, is not what I would describe as tremendously jovial, either by nature or habit. But following these reflections on moods, I began to think that I should not accept this tendency toward ill will: as I read somewhere, pessimists give the impression of being intelligent, but it is optimists who are successful. As I was saying, I used to wake up in the morning annoyed, wanting to argue with someone, or rather with everyone, wallowing in my tormented thoughts. But I decided, hesitantly at first and then with determination, to change. I began to recognize the movement of my mood toward irritation and distraction, and instead of letting it continue undisturbed, I began to remind myself of the opportunities of the new day, the life ahead, and the hopes and possibilities that come with it. And I realized that this brief act of persuasion was often enough to change my mood, to put me in a more positive frame of mind for the day ahead, whatever difficulties or pleasures it might present. It's not that being irritated or in an aggressive mood should always be avoided, and even less so the sadness that follows an unfortunate event. It's just that irritation and aggression should be used sparingly: it must be the right mood for the occasion."