Is it possible to break free from personal beliefs that stop us from fulfilling our potential as human beings? The answer is yes.
In this article, we’ll explore Benjamin Hardy’s newest book, Personality Isn’t Permanent: Break Free From Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story, and some insights I had from reading it. These gems of wisdom have the potential to unlock the best version of yourself — as they are helping me do so with myself.
Are we born hardwired to become the persons we think we are?
Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist and bestselling author of Willpower Doesn’t Work, argues in his newest book Personality Isn’t Permanent, that we have accepted as an undeniable truth the notion that our personalities are static, implying that all of the self-beliefs we maintain set the way in which we’ll flourish as human beings. For better but, usually, for worse.
There is an underlying problem with this notion. If we accept that our personalities are innate to what constitutes our humanity (i.e. personality is embedded to our DNA), for most — including myself — it can create an illusiory glass ceiling to what we can become; it would limit what we can accomplish in life. It can also stop us from creating meaningful relationships or having unique life experiences. Furthermore, it can stagnate our abilities to innovate, and help others.
Moreover, it has become a habit in our current social landscape to find confirming evidence to sustain this glass ceiling. One way of achieving this is through a Personality Test (the most popular include tests like Myers-Briggs and Enneagram). Once we fill out these kind of tests, and we reveal the “true reasons” behind our behaviors, it can crystallize a narrative of ourselves. As Benjamin points out:
The mainstream perspective is that your personality is the real and authentic you. Your personality is “innate” and, for the most part, unchangeable. As a result, your job as a human being is to gather enough information and experience — to find the right personality test — in order to adequately “discover” your “hidden” personality.
Once you make this all-important discovery, you are then enbled to build your entire life around that personality. This life you build may not be the one you’d have chosen for yourself. But it’s the life you were born to live. It’s the hand you were dealt. To do anything otherwise would be disastrous, painful, and delusional.
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
In other words, when we take a personality test, we have given away all possibilites to change, to improve. This is because self-responsiblity is externalized to forces we cannot control. Personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs test can be really harmful in this sense. Add this to the fact that, according to Benjamin, this test is unscientific because it tends to oversimplify what personality actually is.
Although entertaining, type-based personality tests are unscientific — and would have you believe that you are essentially more limited than you really are. They portray an inaccurate and overly simplified portrait of people, filled with broad and sweeping generalizations that anybody could feel relates to them.
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
Therefore, this puts us in the risk of being “categorized” as either introverts or extroverts, for example. Put another way, something as dynamic as our personalities cannot, according to Benjamin, be summarized to fit into boxes.
Instead of assuming that tests such as Myers-Briggs or Enneagram reveal who we truly are, Benjamin argues that these personality tests should be treated as a tool to understand our interaction with the world and to serve as a compass in order to “get guidance and direction”.
What Should Define Us, Then?
Simply put, our goals and the vision of the future should define us. However, most of us don’t have a clear view of what we want to accomplish — thanks to self limiting beliefs, usually internalized due to personality tests or past experiences. Before reading Personality Isn’t Permanent, I used to extrapolate my past experiences to the future.
This meant that all of what I thought I could become was contingent to who I was in the past. This is not crazy thinking, as the past does serve as a tool to help us cope with life — which is inherently unpredictable. This, for me, meant that what I have lived in the past would always define the road I pave throughout the future.
But predictability, as Benjamin stresses out, usually translates into stagnation:
Your brain wants your life to be safe and predictable. Your brain will try to stop you from putting yourself in risky situations.
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
This realization is key: our personality does not become stagnant but rather our environment does. When our neurological circuits demand predictive outcomes, life tends to become highly routine. This is why for most of us, past experiences, which can include traumatic events, fortify our old patterns and confirm that there is no possibility for change.
Once we realize that our brain demands predictability, we have more space to make decisions that can move us from habitual environments to challenging settings.
Our lives should not be the result of past experiences, they have got to be driven by our goals and decisions.
Once we realize this, our vision has become the protagonist of our story. Our vision now is disentangled from the chains of the past. It no longer serves our personalities, but rather our personalities become adapted to it.
How Does Trauma Enter The Equation?
Trauma, Benjamin argues, is one of the leading causes that impede us to move forward in life. Past experiences that may have hurt us or have been associated with unpleasant feelings are often the reason why life becomes so predictable.
Think of it this way: our brain, as stipulated earlier, seeks to make life as stable as possible. If I have lived a traumatic experience in my life, the rational thing to do is to avoid similar situations that may keep hurting me. This, in theory, sounds ideal.
If I remove trauma from the equation, it must result in me flourishing and maximizing my potential as a human being, right? To put it bluntly, the outcome is the complete opposite. Benjamin perfectly illustrates this point:
By continually avoiding our past traumas and the emotions they create, our life becomes an unhealthy and repetitive pattern. When this is the case, then, yes, our past does become an accurate predictor of our future. It’s not because personality is unchanging, but rather because we’re avoiding that change.
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
By reading this mind-bending book, I realized that traumatic experiences can enhance the probabilities of becoming my best self only if I reframed the experience. That is, instead of seeing my past experiences as the building blocks of a deterministic future, they can serve as propellers of a much different life, filled with enriched lessons.
What’s astonishing about this is that, after this realization, automatically, the driver’s seat now belongs to us — and now we can start developing ourselves around our purpose.
Purpose Trumps Personality
Do you think that the world would have had Ghandi, Mother Teresa, or anyone who has made a huge impact made their decisions based on their personality?
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
Most certainly, the answer is no. Outliers, such as them, are driven by something they have set to accomplish which is much bigger than who they are.
The case can be made that our personality changes once we are truly serious about our purpose. Purpose in life is not about “discovering” it, they are a direct result of us “choosing” it. We must be proactive in building the life we want, rather than waiting for a spark to ignite within us.
Paradoxically, the fuel of our inner fire is directly associated with the self-accountability we have of our time in this life. As Benjamin puts it:
As you proactively and intentionally make positive decisions, develop skills, and seek out new experiences, your personality will develop and change in meaningful ways. It will adapt to the level of your goals and decisions, rather than your decisions and goals falling to the level of your current personality.
— Benjamin Hardy, Personality Isn’t Permanent
Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset
What is the difference between the following statements?
“There will always be more.” and “There will never be enough.”
One statement is the result of having a growth mindset, the other is the result of a fixed mindset. Having a growth mindset brings you closer to your goals, while the other makes the illusion of achieving the same but, in a sneeky manner, tears you and your dreams apart.
Benjamin offers a vast amount of exercises throughout Personality Isn’t Permanent that can help us move from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset. One of the biggest activities Benjamin invites us to do, while and after reading his book, is to write down — in a jorunal, preferably — in as much detail as we can, how would our future would look if we had a growth mindset vs. how it would look like if we were still attached to a fixed mindset.
Questions that Benjamin asks us in Personality Isn’t Permanent include: “Where do you have a fixed mindset?” and “Who is your ideal future self, regardless of what you’ve been in the past or what has happened to you?” Thinking about the answers and writing them down can achieve a great deal of things.
Conclusion
Personality is not permanent. Thinking that it is may end up in having a life with unfulfilled goals, unstable relationships and hurtful, continous experiences. Ben’s argument is that we can all change. If we set out to become the best versions of ourselves and realize that life is not determined by past experiences, many things that we thought could be impossible to accomplish will begin to materialize.
This book challenged my views about who I thought I was and, most importantly, why did I think of myself as a byproduct of past experiences.
Personality Isn’t Permanent was an eye-opener about how can our beliefs shape our destiny. And by that line of thought, if we upgrade those beliefs from self-limiting to self-thrusters, our destiny will dramatically change for good.
If you are interested in becoming the best version of yourself and taking a deep dive into what makes you, you, Personality Isn’t Permanent will do the trick for you.
As I am a firm believer that it will, Ben has allowed me to share with you the first chapter of the book. If you click the link below the book cover, you’ll have access to it.
One last thing, don’t forget to check out throughconversations.com on August for my exclusive, in-depth conversation with Benjamin about these ideas and many more that are written in his newest book, Personality Isn’t Permanent.
