Can you change? Not just your routines and habits – like spending less and saving more, or watching less TV and getting fitter – but your actual personality?
We’ve all heard the sayings. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. “A leopard never changes its spots”. “The wolf changes his coat but not his character”.
In terms of changing our fundamental ‘essence’, many people believe that we’re not really all that changeable. But here’s the good news: they’re wrong. Over the past three decades, rapid advances in brain science, personality psychology and many other fields have made the answer to this question of deep change much more nuanced and complex. And it turns out that we can change a great deal about our fundamental characters.
Here’s what you need to know if you’re going through or planning a big change.
Anyone can change
Studies in people recovering from brain injuries and stroke have long suggested that our brains are very adaptable, and we are capable of learning at any age. Yes, picking up Mandarin might be harder at 70 than it would be at age seven, but you can learn a new language or skill at any age – just as stroke victims can relearn how to speak, using different parts of the brain. Not only does this brain plasticity make us more adaptable and flexible than we imagine, but it also extends to deeper aspects of our personality, such as levels of shyness or self-discipline.
Changing your life starts with behaviour change
According to research, the best way to change fundamental personality traits that trouble us – being too untidy, too outgoing, too shy or too fixed in our routines – is to focus on changing our behaviours. The big idea here is that our daily habits reflect our personality, and that repeating these habitual behaviours often creates a feedback loop that makes you believe that your personality is fixed. By making a conscious decision to notice and change your behaviour, you can shift fundamental aspects of who you are. This notion – that changing your habits really can change your life – is becoming increasingly accepted among experts who study behavioural modification.
Behaviour change leads to identity change
People who decide to include cooking lessons in their routine can change their view of themselves from being ‘hopeless’ in the kitchen to being accomplished. Dance classes can transform someone who ‘can’t dance’ into the life and soul of the party. But this also works on less tangible personality traits. For example, if a shy person decides to talk to one unfamiliar colleague each week and then follows through successfully, this can make them start ‘seeing’ themselves differently. “Maybe I’m not so shy after all.”
Small changes make the biggest difference
The key to shifting your habits – and, through this, reshaping key elements of your personality – is to take an incremental, one-step-at-at-time approach to change. Most attempts to change our habits fail because we go out too hard and too fast. James Clear, author of the bestselling book, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, writes: “Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. Whether it is losing weight, building a business, writing a book, winning a championship, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about. Meanwhile, improving by one percent isn’t particularly notable –sometimes it isn’t even noticeable – but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding.”
Change is social
We also often fail to change because we don’t get the support we need. Habits are all created in social contexts and need to be reversed in social contexts. That often means doing two things: changing your environment to make the new habits easier, and getting someone to help you with your habit change. Do both and you’ll drastically increase your chances of success.
Failure is also part of the process
A huge breakthrough for many people is realising that we learn more from our mistakes than we do from most other experience – and that learning from your mistakes is a critical step in the path to growth. This puts the notion of failure into a whole new perspective: you haven’t failed, you simply haven’t succeeded yet.
These insights all link into an emerging science of change that suggests we modify not just our habits but – through habit-modification – the parts of our personality that trouble us. Indeed, it is entirely possible to change our stories about ourselves and adopt a more growth-orientated mindset.
Call us ‘leopards’, ‘old dogs’ or ‘wolves’. Spots and jackets can be changed and new tricks can be learned. Developing self-knowledge, getting constructive feedback from others and thinking about how you might want to be different in the world in terms of how you react and behave, can be the start of a wonderful journey.
Click here to gain some insight into your personality, and here to find out how to embark on change processes. Sometimes, all it takes is a step in the right direction.
Leave a Reply